What struck me in their report is how unhappy the Middle East is. The only Middle Eastern country in the top twenty is Kuwait (for the first time in this cycle). Kuwait has oil wealth and is a compact country with lots of social interaction. The high score may reflect Kuwait’s lively labor movement. That sort of movement isn’t allowed in the other Gulf States. The United Arab Emirates came in at 22, and Saudi Arabia at 28.

These countries are all very wealthy and their people are very social and connected to clans and other group identities, including religious congregations.

But everyone else in the Middle East is way down the list.

As usual, Gallup found that the very happiest countries were Scandinavian lands shaped by social democratic policies. It turns out that a government safety net of the sort the Republican Party wants to get rid of actually is key to making people happy.

Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden take the top four spots. Israel, which also has a Labor socialist founding framework, is fifth. The Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland and Luxembourg fill out the top nine.

The Gallup researchers believe that a few major considerations affect well-being or happiness. They note, “Social interactions of all kinds … add to happiness, in addition to their effects flowing through increases in social support and reductions in loneliness.” My brief experience of being in Australia suggests to me that they are indeed very social and likely not very lonely on the whole. Positive emotions also equate to well-being and are much more important in determining it than negative emotions. The positive emotions include joy, gratitude, serenity, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration, awe, and altruism, among others.

Benevolence, doing good to others, also adds to well-being. Interestingly, the Gallup researchers find that benevolence increased in COVID and its aftermath across the board.

They also factor in GDP per capita, that is, how poor or wealthy people are.

Gallup Video: “2024 World Happiness Report; Gallup CEO Jon Clifton”

Bahrain comes in at 62, which shows that oil wealth isn’t everything. It is deeply divided between a Sunni elite and a Shiite majority population, and that sectarian tension likely explains why it isn’t as happy as Kuwait. Kuwait is between a sixth and a third Shiite and also has a Sunni elite, but the Shiites are relatively well treated and the Emir depends on them to offset the power of Sunni fundamentalists. So it isn’t just sectarian difference that affects happiness but the way in which the rulers deal with it.

Libya, which is more or less a failed state after the people rose up to overthrow dictator Moammar Gaddafi, nevertheless comes in at 66. There is some oil wealth when the militias allow its export, and despite the east-west political divide, people are able to live full lives in cities like Benghazi and Tripoli. Maybe the overhang of getting rid of a hated dictator is still a source of happiness for them.

Algeria, a dictatorship and oil state, is 85. The petroleum wealth is not as great as in the Gulf by any means, and is monopolized by the country’s elite.

Iraq, an oil state, is 92. Like Bahrain, it suffers from ethnic and sectarian divides. It is something of a failed state after the American overthrow of its government.

Iran, another oil state, is 100. Its petroleum sales are interfered with by the US except with regard to China, so its income is much more limited than other Gulf oil states. The government is dictatorial and young people seem impatient with its attempt to regiment their lives, as witnessed in the recent anti-veiling protests.

The State of Palestine is 103, which is actually not bad given that they are deeply unhappy with being occupied by Israel. This ranking certainly plummeted after the current Israeli total war on Gaza began.

Morocco is 107. It is relatively poor, in fact poorer than some countries that rank themselves much lower on the happiness scale.

Tunisia is one of the wealthier countries in Africa and much better off than Morocco, but it comes in at 115. In the past few years all the democratic gains made during and after the Arab Spring have been reversed by horrid dictator Qais Saied. People seem to be pretty unhappy at now living in a seedy police state.

Jordan is both poor and undemocratic, and is ranked 125.

Egypt is desperately poor and its government since 2014 has been a military junta in business suits that brooks not the slightest dissent. It is 127. The hopes of the Arab Spring are now ashes.

Yemen is 133. One of the poorest countries in the world, it suffered from being attacked by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates from 2015 until 2021. So it is war torn and poverty-stricken.

Lebanon ranks almost at the bottom at 142. Its economy is better than Yemen’s but its government is hopelessly corrupt and its negligence caused the country’s major port to be blown up, plunging the country into economic crisis. It is wracked by sectarianism. If hope is a major positive emotion that leads to feelings of happiness, it is in short supply there.

Some countries are too much of a basket case to be included, like Syria, where I expect people are pretty miserable after the civil war. Likewise Sudan, which is now in civil strife and where hundreds of thousands may starve.

Poverty, dictatorship, disappointment in political setbacks, and sectarianism all seem to play a part in making the Middle East miserable. The role of the United States in supporting the dictatorships in Egypt and elsewhere, or in supporting wars, has been sinister and certainly has added significantly to the misery. For no group in the region is this more true than for the Palestinians.

At the end of November 2022, UK prime minister Rishi Sunak announced that the “golden era” between Great Britain and China was over. China may not have been too bothered by this news however, and has been busy making influential friends elsewhere.

In early December, Chinese president Xi Jinping met with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – a group made up of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – to discuss trade and investment. Also on the agenda were talks on forging closer political ties and a deeper security relationship.

This summit in Saudi Arabia was the latest step in what our research shows is an increasingly close relationship between China and the Gulf states. Economic ties have been growing consistently for several decades (largely at the expense of trade with the US and the EU) and are specifically suited to their respective needs.

Simply put, China needs oil, while the Gulf needs to import manufactured goods including household items, textiles, electrical products and cars.

China’s pronounced growth in recent decades has been especially significant for the oil rich Gulf state economies. Between 1980 and 2019, their exports to China grew at an annual rate of 17.1%. In 2021, 40% of China’s crude oil imports came from the Gulf – more than any other country or regional group, with 17% from Saudi Arabia alone.

And the oil will likely continue to flow in China’s direction. In 2009, it was predicted that China would require 14 million barrels of oil per day by 2025. In fact, China reached that figure in 2019 and is expected to need at least 17 million barrels per day by 2040. At the same time, the US became a net oil exporter in 2019 and thus achieved a longstanding foreign policy goal: to overcome its dependence on Middle Eastern fossil fuels.

China has benefited from increasing demand for its manufactured products, with exports to the Gulf growing at an annual rate of 11.7% over the last decade. It overtook the US in 2008 and then the EU in 2020 to become the Gulf’s most important source of imports.

These are good customers for China to have. The Gulf economies are expected to grow by around 5.9% in 2022 (compared with a lacklustre 2.5% predicted growth in the US and EU) and offer attractive opportunities for China’s export-orientated economy. It is likely that the fast-tracking of a free trade agreement was high on the summit’s agenda in early December.

Strong ties

The Gulf’s increased reliance on trade with China has been accompanied by a reduction in its appetite to follow the west’s political and cultural lead.

As a group, it was supportive of the west’s military action in Iraq for example, and the broader fight against Islamic State. But more recently, the Gulf notably refused to support the west in condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It also threatened Netflix with legal action for “promoting homosexuality”, while Qatar has been actively banning rainbow flags supporting sexual diversity at the Fifa men’s World Cup.

So Xi’s visit to Saudi Arabia was well timed to illustrate a strengthening of this important partnership. And to the extent that anything can be forecast, a deepening of the Gulf-China trade relationship seems likely. On the political front, however, developments are less easy to predict.

China is seeking to safeguard its interests in the Middle East in light of the Belt and Road initiative, its ambitious transcontinental infrastructure and investment project.

But how much further might the Gulf states be prepared to sacrifice their longstanding security pacts with western powers (forged in the aftermath of the second world war) in order to seek new ones with the likes of Beijing? Currently, America has military bases (or stations) in all six Gulf countries, but it is well documented that the GCC is seeking ways to diversify its self-perceived over-reliance on the US as its primary guarantor of security (a sentiment within the bloc that was pronounced while Obama was president, less so with Trump, but on the rise again with Biden).

In the coming period, the GCC will need to decide which socioeconomic path to pursue in the post-oil era where AI-augmented, knowledge-based economies will set the pace. In choosing strategic ties beyond trade alone, the Gulf states must ask whether the creativity and innovative potential of their populations will be best served by allegiances to governments which are authoritarian, or accountable.

Emilie Rutledge, Lecturer in Economics, The Open University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The headline we’ll never see is that the United States paid off reparations for its illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s attack on Kuwait in early August, 1990, was an act of naked aggression that violated the United Nations Charter, to which both Iraq and Kuwait were signatories. The Iraqi occupation was brutal, and Baghdad announced that it had permanently annexed Kuwait based on an Ottoman-era claim. One of the more destructive acts committed by Iraqi troops came as the war was ending and Iraqi tanks were racing back to Iraq. Saddam’s troops set fire to Kuwaiti oil fields. Oil field fires are the worst. They cannot easily be extinguished, and last for years, doing enormous damage to the fields. Kuwait was one of the over a million parties that Iraq had to compensate.

$14.7 billion of the reparations were paid to the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, the main victim of the oil field fires.

Despite the dysfunction of the United Nations system, the organization does accomplish some good things for an orderly world built on a rule of law. The success of the Gulf War reparations in securing compensation for victims of a war of aggression is a good example. The UN can often conduct successful diplomacy and make conciliation possible in ways that are difficult or impossible for a superpower.

The problem with a lot of such international institutions, such as the UN and the International Criminal Court, is that they only apply justice to the small, weak countries of the world, while the rich and powerful skate.

The ICC has had several successful prosecutions of human rights violators in Africa, but its docket has been accused of being Africa-heavy. One problem is that the court can only go after people in states that have signed the Rome Statute, and while 123 have, a lot of big important countries have declined. The US is not a signatory, for instance. The only exception is where the UN Security Council forwards a case to the ICC. That is what happened in 2011, when Libyan dictator Moammar Qaddafi and his son Saif were indicted. The problem? Libya is, again, in Africa.

The Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq in 2003 violated the UN Charter and international law in precisely the way that Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait did. It was a war of aggression without the least legitimacy in international law. In the UN Charter, there are only two justifiable reasons for launching a war. One is self-defense. The other is if the UN Security Council designates a government a danger to international order and asks UN members to intervene.

The UN Security Council pointedly refused to authorize Bush’s war, which frankly surprised me at the time. Bush singled out France as declining to go along, but it was clear that actually a majority of the 15-member body was against Bush’s war.

And, Iraq was not a threat to the United States, so the war was not launched by Washington in self-defense. The Bush administration’s bald-faced lies about Iraq having chemical or biological weapons and Baghdad’s alleged nuclear weapons program were intended to create the impression that the poor, weak, ramshackle Saddam Hussein government posed an aggressive danger to the most powerful country in the world. Unfortunately for Bush’s reputation, Iraq had no such weapons and had destroyed chemical stockpiles under the supervision of UN inspectors. (There is the UN doing something very useful again.)

Americans are so self-absorbed that when they talk about the economic damage of the Iraq War, they refer to the estimated $6 trillion it will end up costing the US. But that was just the cost of prosecuting the war and taking care of wounded veterans.

What about the damage done to Iraq? The US kicked off events that caused 4 million out of then 26 million Iraqis to be displaced from their homes, 1.5 million of them abroad. Hundreds of thousands died. Widows and orphans were created. Unemployment in some regions of Iraq in 2003 spiraled above 50 percent. The US ran all the state-owned companies into the ground as hated examples of socialism, but replaced them with nothing, expecting the magic hand of capitalism to miraculously get the economy going. The US actually just illegally stole Iraq’s petroleum income for the first year of the occupation to fund its own government of Iraq.

The US will never have to pay any reparations for all the destruction it kicked off in Iraq. Washington has a veto on the UN Security Council and has not signed the Rome Statute, so it is beyond the reach of these international institutions and cannot be fined for its crimes.

Worst of all, Bush legitimated aggressive invasions on the world stage. Vladimir Putin took a page from Bush’s book when he invaded Crimea in 2014.

So we won’t really have an international rule of law until there are no privileged countries or leaders, and until even the great powers have to pay reparations for violating the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions.

( Middle East Monitor ) – Lebanon is plagued by crises, with a new one added almost daily. The people are suffering from power cuts and fuel shortages, and queue for hours at petrol stations and bakeries. Daily life has become unbearable. There is also the conflict between the Lebanese armed forces and Hezbollah to contend with. Nobody knows how it will end. Is another civil war on the way? The price for this will be paid by ordinary people with their money, blood and lives.

As if all of this wasn’t enough, we now see that Minister of Information George Kordahi has unwittingly dragged Lebanon into a new crisis following statements he made during an episode of the “People’s Parliament” on Al Jazeera, when he called the war in Yemen “futile”. The programme was recorded in August, before he became a minister in the government of Prime Minister Najib Mikati. Following his appointment, Kordahi asked Al Jazeera not to air the episode because he had expressed his personal views, not the official Lebanese government position. His request was ignored, and the episode was aired. The timing is suspicious, given that it has prompted a diplomatic crisis.

The graceless Saudi Arabian Crown Prince, Mohammed Bin Salman, was not happy with Kordahi’s comment. It was Bin Salman, remember, who launched his coalition military campaign against Yemen under the name “Operation Decisive Storm” eight years ago, and has not been able to resolve it. He claimed at the time that the battle would last just a few hours during which he would eliminate the rebellious Houthis and restore the legitimate government of President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi to Yemen.

As we all know, it didn’t turn out that way. Houthi missiles have hit Riyadh and other Saudi cities, forcing Bin Salman to present an initiative to end the war in Yemen, which the Houthis rejected without hesitation. Now Bin Salman is asking some Western countries to mediate with Iran — which backs the Houthis — for a ceasefire and negotiations. Recent news is that there are indeed negotiations taking place between Saudi Arabia and Iran behind closed doors.

Kordahi isn’t alone in thinking that the war in Yemen is futile; politicians and government officials in the West have said the same thing, as have analysts and writers, myself included. We have urged an immediate end to the fighting because it has killed and injured tens of thousands of Yemenis, destroyed their land and country, and created a humanitarian catastrophe.

So why did Saudi Arabia react so strongly after Kordahi’s comment was aired by Al Jazeera? What was the major crime that made Saudi Arabia and its coalition ally the UAE expel the Lebanese ambassadors from both countries, recall their own ambassadors from Beirut and impose economic sanctions on struggling Lebanon? Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Qatar have also condemned Kordahi’s statements and reiterated their support for Saudi Arabia.

I believe that there is more to this than Kordahi’s comment. This was confirmed by the Saudi foreign minister’s remarks to Reuters about the crisis. “I think it’s important that the government in Lebanon or the Lebanese establishment forges a path forward that frees Lebanon from the current political construct, which reinforces the dominance of Hezbollah,” said Prince Faisal Bin Farhan.

The way that Saudi Arabia has escalated the crisis with Lebanon illustrates the immaturity of the governments of failed Arab states. Lebanon’s misfortune is that it is plagued by Saudi Arabia and Iran, each of which backs their Lebanese followers along sectarian lines.

Although Prime Minister Mikati praised Saudi Arabia’s regional role and its support for Lebanon in particular, his country’s support for Riyadh and condemnation of the Houthi attacks on the Kingdom did not satisfy Bin Salman. I wonder, though, why the prince did not take such a strong stand against those in the West who have condemned his “futile” war in Yemen.

Why didn’t he feel that the Kingdom was being insulted when Donald Trump insulted it in his speeches and said that he would milk the country, which needed to pay for US protection. He also said if it wasn’t for the US, Bin Salman and his ilk would not still be in their positions. Why have they stayed silent in the face of constant insults by Western leaders and officials? They look in their mirrors and see lions; they are anything but.

George Kordahi is under pressure to resign, but he insists that Lebanon is a sovereign country and cannot give in to blackmail, so he will not submit his resignation. However, the fate of the Mikati government will depend on him doing so. According to Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib, Kordahi is considering the resignation proposal, but he is consulting with others before making his decision. This is a reference to his allies in Syria and Hezbollah.

Mikati’s government could well fall if Kordahi insists on staying on as minister of information. On the face of it, this is a storm in a teacup which wouldn’t have such serious repercussions under normal circumstances. But this is not a normal set of circumstances. We could well be looking at Lebanon as the latest battlefield in the war between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Amira Abo el-Fetouh is a writer on politics and literature and a physician, living in Cairo.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

—–

Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

TRT World: “Saudi Arabia expels Lebanese Ambassador, bans all imports from Lebanon”

When the Jordanian royal family gathered on April 11 to celebrate 100 years since the kingdom’s foundation, it was a picture of dynastic unity. Alongside King Abdullah was his half-brother, the former crown prince Hamzah bin al-Hussein, who had only days ago been placed under house arrest, following what was reported in the world’s press as a “coup attempt”. The king gave interviews assuring the outside world that all was well and that the former heir to the Jordanian throne had offered him his loyalty.

In no other area of the world do royal families dominate politics as much as in the Middle East. Six of the states on the Arabian peninsula are monarchies, as are Jordan and Morocco. Royals not only rule in these states, but in most cases members of the royal family dominate positions of influence in government and business sectors.

This prevalence of absolute monarchies in the Middle East has puzzled scholars for decades. Many somewhat arrogantly assumed that these modes of governance would die out as the states modernised and “inevitably” followed the western model, becoming republics or embracing the constitutional monarchy model. Yet the monarchies have proved to be rather resilient.

During the seismic regional upheaval of the Arab Spring from 2010 onwards, a number of republics were convulsed by revolution. But, while several monarchies endured significant protests, none fell – and few really looked in mortal peril.

How do the monarchies hold on?

Investigating the roots of this resilience has engendered a burst of scholarship. Some scholars have argued that monarchies were culturally or otherwise locally attuned and fit simply into prevalent tribal heritages. Others suggested that monarchies are more effective at controlling opposition or that they oppress their way to relative stability.

But such explanations struggle to contend with the region’s history. Any sense of a special predilection in the Middle East for monarchy is undercut by the reality that many monarchies have fallen in the past century or so, as in Egypt, Tunisia, Iraq, North Yemen, South Arabia, Libya and Iran.

A more compelling explanation is likely to lie elsewhere. For the Gulf monarchies, it is difficult to get away from the transformative impact of gargantuan levels of hydrocarbon resources.

Wealth alone is far from a panacea – just ask citizens in Iraq, Iran, or Venezuela. But the careful and effective distribution of wealth has surely been a critical factor engendering comparative stability in the monarchies. Not only that, but all monarchies occupy important geostrategic locations. As such, they arguably benefit from the support of influential external states in maintaining the status quo – including the US in the case of the Gulf monarchies and Jordan, and France in the case of Morocco.

The kings and emirs of these states are not elected, and criticising them or their position is usually a bright red line that citizens do not cross. Still, neither are they despots, and they rule with often a surprising degree of support from a range of constituencies.

Indeed, most royal elites created systems to place themselves at the apex of wealth or favour redistribution schemes that are baked into the state’s political economy. This means they have created strong and sometimes diverse groups of individuals and structures in society who continue to be dependent on the status quo from which they benefit.

These benefits vary from country to country. Monarchs in the Gulf have long overseen some of the world’s most generous welfare state systems, as well as low rates of taxation, sometimes explicit promises of jobs in the government sector, and a litany of subsidies. Similarly, in Jordan it has long been argued that elites used government handouts and patronage to boost support in key tribal constituencies.

Storing up problems

This system has worked for decades, but is coming under increasing pressure. Indeed, arguably the central problem that the monarchies face, albeit to varying degrees, is that their economies are classed as rentier economies. This means that, in reality, a comparatively small percentage of the populations are involved with making the majority of the state’s income, which tends to come from extractive industries (oil, gas, minerals) or international support.

The obvious issues here are that these resources are finite and subject to wildly shifting demand and prices. The influence of, for example, hydrocarbons on local economies is so pervasive that it tends to inhibit the emergence of an autonomous, functioning economy. Overall, this means that the state’s GDP lurches around according to factors well beyond the control of the state, which has long played havoc with governments striving to set a sustainable, clear, long-term budget.

Diversifying these economies away from a reliance on these kinds of basic sources of income has been a goal for generations. The results show that states fail to meaningfully diversify unless they are forced to – and even when the wells run practically dry, they switch, like Bahrain, to relying on other monarchies for financial support.

The recent elite spat and mini crisis in Jordan is arguably rooted in precisely these kinds of economic concerns. But, if recent reports are to be believed, the family squabble has been resolved, order has been restored and – for the time being at least – the status quo appears to have survived.

David B Roberts, Associate Professor, School of Security Studies, King’s College London

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

——

Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

NATO: “Q
NATO Secretary General with the King of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan🇯🇴, 05 MAY 2021”

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt announced their boycott on the small peninsula on June 5, 2017.

Secretary of state Mike Pompeo has pushed for an end to the isolation of Qatar because it has destroyed the Gulf Cooperation Council, an alliance of six Sunni Gulf oil monarchies formed in 1982 to block Iran. The Trump administration has attempted to craft an alliance of Israel and the GCC states against Iran.

With the diplomatic efforts of Jared Kushner, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain normalized relations with Israel last summer. This step has made it easier for Israeli submarines to ply the oil Gulf, and opened the way for closer Israeli technological and presumably signals-intelligence cooperation with Dubai, one of the United Arab Emirates — all with an eye to deterring Iran.

h/t Wikimedia.

Qatar has been paying Iran $122 million a year for use of its air space, since Qatar Airways could not fly north over Bahrain or west over Saudi Arabia. Having to fly east before turning for Europe has also hurt Qatar Airways profits. Qatar also imported food from Iran during the first year of the blockade. The dependence of Doha on Iran meant that the Gulf Cooperation Council could not take a united hard line against the ayatollahs in Iran.

Likewise, even if it wanted to, Qatar was not in a position to normalize relations with Israel (though it has correct relations with that country anyway).

Although Jared Kushner is claiming credit for the breakthrough, behind the scenes the Saudis are saying that they took the step because they did not want the Qatar situation to be ongoing as the Biden administration took power. Barak Ravid reports at Axios that the Saudis wanted to “clean the table” in advance of Biden’s inauguration.

Biden and his prospective team have been deeply critical of Saudi Arabia over the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, over the kingdom’s horrible human rights record domestically, and over the war that Riyadh is pursuing against Yemen, which has produced the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.

King Salman seems intent on mollifying the Biden team, and ending the boycott of Qatar is a relatively painless step. Now, when Biden officials meet with the Qatari ambassador, they won’t hear a litany of complaints against the Saudis. It is a relatively small thing, but Saudi Arabia is in big trouble with Washington and the king may think any little bit will help.

King Salman personally sent a letter of invitation to Sheikh Tamim of Qatar to attend Tuesday’s summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council. It will be the first time in 3 years that the emir has attended.

This thaw may also suggest a diminution of the power of crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman, who helped engineer the blockade in the first place. Likewise, it suggests that Saudi Arabia is now overruling the United Arab Emirates, where crown prince and de facto ruler Mohammed Bin Zayed had been even more committed to isolating Qatar than Bin Salman.

The attack on Qatar was the last battle of the Arab Spring. In 2011-13, the youth revolts in the Arab world were supported by Qatar, and as the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood rose to prominence (taking the presidency in Egypt in 2012), Qatar, long a backer of the Brotherhood, provided them aid.

Saudi Arabia and especially Bin Zayed deeply oppose the Muslim Brotherhood, seeing the fundamentalist, populist party as inherently revolutionary and republican with a small ‘r,’ i.e., they are like the Baptists in the southern colonies who joined George Washington to fight the British crown. Riyadh and Abu Dhabi have given billions to the military junta of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Egypt to root out the Brotherhood, after al-Sisi overthrew its elected government in 2013. The UAE has also backed military strong man Khalifa Hiftar in Libya against the more fundamentalist government in Tripoli.

Since Turkey’s president Tayyip Erdogan is also a backer of the Muslim Brotherhood, there has been a cold war for the past nearly a decade between the UAE-Saudi Arabia axis, which supports enlightened secular dictatorship as the model for the region, and the Turkey-Qatar entente, which supports a democratic sort of government in which Muslim fundamentalists can compete for power, just as the Christian Democrats compete for seats in the German parliament. The Middle East is basically Frederick the Great versus the Berlin Republic.

Since the Iranian government is basically the Shiite version of the Muslim Brotherhood, the UAE and Saudi Arabia want to isolate and roll it back, too. It isn’t part of the Turkey-Qatar entente, but they are considered “soft” on Iran by Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.

One of the Quartet’s demands was the shuttering of the Al Jazeera satellite news channel, which is funded by the Qatari government but has substantial editorial independence. Al Jazeera is pro-democracy and is willing to interview Muslim Brotherhood figures and not simply demonize them. This editorial line, of presenting “all sides of a story,” drives the UAE and Saudi Arabia crazy.

One of the sad things that has happened to Arab culture in the past decade is that the Saudis and the UAE have bought up many the newspapers/ news sites in the region, and the junta in Egypt has ramped up censorship, so that independent news reporting is very rare. Al Jazeera is thus one of the last independent voices, and the 2017 boycott was intended in part to close it down so as to give the Saudis and UAE full spectrum dominance in the region’s media.

The agreement to end the blockade on Qatar will not heal the rift entirely. The Gulf Cooperation Council was in part a security pact. How can the Qataris ever trust the Saudis and the UAE to have their backs? Some proposed a unified electrical grid throughout the Arab littoral of the Gulf. But any such system would open Qatar to being left in the dark if the campaign was renewed. That is, cooperation and vulnerability go together, and Qatar can’t cooperate too closely with people that tried once to destroy it lest it become highly vulnerable.

I also don’t expect Qatar’s correct relations with Iran to change, whatever hopes Mr. Kushner may have in that regard.

The boycott was imposed in June, 2017, with the active encouragement of Donald Trump. Only in the fall of 2017 did Trump back off and begin making up with Qatar. The blockading Quartet countries nevertheless kept the pressure on, preventing Qatar from importing food through Saudi Arabia or from using their air space. They also plotted to destabilize the Qatari currency and trumped up charges against the country of backing terrorism (which is ridiculous).

Back in 2017, the blockading Quartet may have plotted the overthrow and death of the reigning Emir, Sheikh Tamim b. Hamad Al Thani. Ironically, Kushner may have been in on the plot. The Turkish parliament halted any such plans by voting to send hundreds of Troops to Qatar as a signal that the powerful Turkish military would not put up with such a regime change.

Likewise, the US secretary of defense, James Mattis, and the secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, worked behind the scenes to protect Qatar. The small state hosts the al-Udeid US Air Force Base, with some 12,000 military personnel, from which US sorties are flown against ISIL in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. Qatar is also a major natural gas exporter, in which ExxonMobil, of which Tillerson was the CEO before joining the Trump administration, was well aware and he hoped for an increased share for his old company of this valuable resource.

It should be remembered that Kushner has only partially helped fix what he and Trump broke.

Qatar survived, and has now had a victory of sorts. The major credit likely goes to the incoming Biden administration. We’re seeing signs that Biden’s determination to fix some of the dysfunctions of US Middle East policy is already having an effect, two weeks before he even takes office.

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Bonus video:

Al Jazeera English: “Saudi Arabia, Qatar ‘agree to open airspace, land and sea border’”

Citizens of Saudi Arabia are having to get used to something that has long been an unpleasant fact of life in most parts of the world. On July 1, the kingdom tripled the VAT levied on consumer goods and services from 5% to 15%. There were reports of frantic stockpiling ahead of the change as consumers put coronavirus fears to one side to buy while prices were low.

Besides VAT, the Saudis are implementing an austerity package that includes cuts to people’s living allowances and to national spending plans to develop the country. The kingdom is partly attributing these measures to the COVID-19 effect on oil prices, which crashed below zero in April. The oil price has since recovered somewhat, though at circa US$40 (£32) per barrel, is still well below what the kingdom is used to.

Together with the economic effects of coronavirus restrictions, this has been putting severe pressure on the Saudis and their petroleum-rich neighbours in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC): Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. The IMF recently predicted that the GCC economies would contract nearly 8% in 2020 – a steep downgrade from the 3% decline it forecast in April.

All the same, there is more to the Saudi belt-tightening than the pandemic. On VAT, for instance, the whole GCC bloc reached an agreement in 2016 to introduce VAT for the first time at 5% across the board. The Saudis and UAE duly did so in 2018, followed by Bahrain a year later. Oman, Kuwait and Qatar have yet to impose this tax on their populations, but the question is “when” rather than “whether” they will follow suit.

Visions from the desert

It has long been obvious to the GCC nations that their existence as “rentier” states that rely on massive natural resources to subsidise goods and services for their populations cannot continue. Petroleum prices are low and unstable, and renewable technologies are reducing global demand for fossil-fuel products.

For years, these countries have been trying to increase their tax revenue and cut public expenditure while diversifying away from petroleum into everything from alternative energy to petrochemicals to construction. They do this through national “vision” plans such as Saudi Vision 2030, which put the emphasis on private-sector growth and developing the country’s people.

Diversification is supposed to help improve the public finances, yet it has been a victim of the Saudi cutbacks. The kingdom has made a US$8 billion budget cut to Vision 2030, which will involve scaling back plans such as a futuristic city known as Neom and a massive tourism development on the Red Sea.

This will jeopardise the success of the whole Saudi policy of economic diversification, and risks being repeated with cuts to “vision” plans across the region. Economic stimulus packages were announced in every GCC country in light of the fall in oil prices, but cuts in public spending will probably outweigh them. Compared to a projected Saudi budget cut of 12%, Oman is for instance cutting 10%, while Bahrain is seeking 30% in cuts.

Gulf countries and women

Not only is this bad news for long-term economic prospects, it raises serious development concerns with respect to women. I did a study of Omani women in the context of Oman’s Vision 2020 (since superseded by Vision 2040). It was clear that these visions are part of a social contract, in which the sultanate retains power in exchange for providing the population of nearly 5 million with various kinds of support.

Particularly for women of low-income and minimal-education backgrounds, the state has been a major catalyst for their personal and professional development. It has provided them with education, training and employment programmes aimed at helping them to participate in the economy.

Likewise, there have been numerous initiatives to help women across the region in recent years. In UAE and Saudi Arabia, legislation was introduced in 2018 and 2019 aiming to remove gender-based discrimination in the workplace. The Saudis’ decision to lift the ban on women driving in 2018 was not only a win for women’s rights but also improved women’s access to workplaces among other gains.

Nonetheless, the Gulf continues to suffer from an “education and employment paradox”, where women are very well educated but play a very limited role in the workforce. The daily reality for women is that they still have to navigate entrenched structures of patriarchy and discrimination that devalue their work. More progressive laws do not guarantee better outcomes for women on their own. The Gulf economies are in fact more undermined by low female participation in the workplace than any other region in the world.

The World Bank has pressed these nations to keep improving in this regard, for instance calling on them to make it easier for women to launch businesses. As shown in my Oman study, barriers can be financial, such as not having enough money to get a business off the ground; and social, such as not having adequate social networks to spread the word and build professional contacts.

In sum, opportunities for women have been rapidly expanding in the Gulf countries in recent years as their rights increase and these economies diversify beyond petroleum to create a wider range of jobs for both men and women. This has been an exciting shift and raises much hope for the future, but it is under threat as the region’s petroleum wealth declines and governments reduce spending.

We can’t assume that women will continue to enjoy greater economic inclusion in the years to come. They will continue to rely on support from the state to drive this agenda forward, at least for a while. This must be protected from austerity programmes, and instead needs more investment both in the private and public sector to enable women – in expanding their capabilities and building their experience, knowledge and skills – to participate effectively alongside men in the economy.

Humaira Hansrod, Researcher in International Development, University of Oxford

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

Middle East Institute Singapore: “The Oil Price Collapse and Its Implications for Gulf Economies”

( Middle East Monitor) – The coronavirus outbreak has put the Arab Gulf States under the spotlight and exposed their structural weaknesses. It has also suggested that security, which is often the focus because of geopolitical regional rivalry, especially with Iran, distracts from other equally important threats.

While it is true that the Gulf States are relatively rich compared to other countries in the region, and as a result, their health sectors are more developed, this has not been able to cover up the problems faced in other areas. The food stampedes in more than one Gulf country, either out of the fear of a curfew being imposed due to the pandemic or concern about shortages, revealed aspects of the weaknesses.

The virus outbreak has demonstrated the extent of the Gulf’s vulnerability in two key areas: the issue of largely migrant workforces and their relationship to the health sector; and food security. Given that at least some migrant workers opted to return to their home countries at the outbreak of the crisis, there is a fear that this will affect the health sectors across the Gulf, as foreigners still dominate, including doctors and nurses. Eighty-five per cent of doctors and nurses in the UAE are foreigners; in Saudi Arabia, the figure is 78 per cent.

As for food security, although the Gulf countries are among the best in the region in this regard, they still depend on imports of food or raw materials used in the food industry. Due to the pandemic lockdowns, the interruption of the supply chain and the slowdown in trade, food security will be threatened if the crisis persists. At the very least, food will be subject to significant price fluctuations. Concern about the Gulf States being affected by the decision of some countries to stop exports of food and agricultural products has prompted Kuwait to call for the establishment of a joint network in the Gulf to secure supplies.

Furthermore, most of the Gulf countries will face financial deficits this year due to low fuel consumption as a result of reduced economic activity around the world. This has contributed to a sharp fall in the price of oil, down to less than $30 a barrel. The recent agreement between OPEC and non-OPEC countries, including Russia and the US, to reduce production by about ten million barrels a day — the largest cut in history — only led to a $1 increase in the price per barrel. This is an indication of the economic crisis that the world is facing due to the coronavirus, and many analysts do not expect global economic activity to return to its pre-crisis level before the end of this year.

Moreover, it is certain that Russia will not actually cut its own oil production; it always announces its intention to do so, but never does. It justifies this by claiming that it is not technically possible, because it is difficult to restart production in Siberia if the wells stop working. This means that oil prices are likely to remain at the current low levels until the pandemic is contained and global economic activity returns to its previous level. Even if this happens, though, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the two largest producers in the Gulf, will have lost part of their market share.

Other sectors will also suffer. Tourism is the most obvious, and Saudi Arabia and the UAE will be the most affected by this, given that it is an important revenue stream for both.

The impact of the coronavirus crisis on the Gulf States will, therefore, affect food imports and energy exports. They are not in immediate danger, of course, as most have sufficient financial reserves and major sovereign funds. Nevertheless, difficult days lie ahead.

This article was published in Arabic in Al-Arabi Al-Jadeed on 15 April 2020

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

Via Middle East Monitor

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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

Wion: “Surge of COVID-19 cases in Gulf nations | Stricter measures implied | Coronavirus Pandemic”

Praising Kuwait’s progressive move, regional media commented on the leading role women have been playing in driving the country’s overall development across all sectors, including public works, social services, economy and politics.

Opportunities for women are now said to exist in all areas of society with many high profile jobs overlooking men in favour of women.

The journey for full political rights has been a long one but the course had been set during the 90’s when women are said to have played a major role in coordinating resistance against Saddam Hussain’s invasion of the Gulf state in August 1990.

Read: Egypt says its universities not involved in forged certificates controversy in Kuwait

Ever since, women have overcome one hurdle after another to obtain equality; a rarity in the region dominated by powerful men. Dr. Rasha Al Sabah was one of the pioneers. She held the position of the first under-secretary of the Ministry of Higher Education in 1993. Others like Nabila Al Mulla followed in her step. She was appointed as the first Kuwaiti ambassador to Zimbabwe and South Africa in 1993. Mulla was then appointed in 2003 as the permanent representative at the United Nations to become the first Arab Muslim ambassadress to the global organisation.

In Kuwait women have bucked the trend and taken senior roles in several municipal, national and international positions that are normally the preserve of men only. They have achieved successes in many fields, proving that they represent half of the community and cannot be marginalised.

The progress has continued and more recently women have been appointed as ministers in several areas including the Minister of State for Housing Affairs which went to Dr. Jenan Bushahri in 2017. A similar rise to the top saw Hind Barak Al Subaih being appointed as minister of social and labour affairs and minister of state for planning and development.

This work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Via Middle East Monitor.

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Featured Photo: Mall scene in Kuwait City, Feb. 9, 2013, by Juan Cole