John R. Bradley
John R. Bradley is the author of After The Arab Spring: How Islamists Hijacked the Middle East Revolts (Palgrave Macmillan).
Bradley is best known for his 2008 book Inside Egypt: The Land of the Pharaohs on the Brink of a Revolution (New York: Palgrave Macmillan). It was banned by the Mubarak regime and accurately predicted the Egyptian uprising of January 2011 that ousted dictator Hosni Mubarak. In May 2011, Fareed Zakaria selected Inside Egypt as his Book of the Week on his GPS show that airs on CNN, explaining: “(This) book… in a strikingly prescient way… foretold the January revolution. (It) was banned by Mubarak’s regime — and understandably so! If you want to understand how Egypt got to this crossroads, read this book.”[6]
Bradley has lectured on the Middle East at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy[7] and Intelligence Squared in London.[8] In addition to Inside Egypt, he has written three other books on the Middle East:
- Saudi Arabia Exposed: Inside a Kingdom in Crisis (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).[9]
- Behind the Veil of Vice: The Business and Culture of Sex in the Middle East (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).[10]
- After the Arab Spring: How the Islamists Hijacked the Middle East Revolt (Palgrave Macmillan, December 2011).[11]
Author's website: http://johnrbradley.wordpress.com/
Saudi Arabia's Invisible Hand in the Arab Spring
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/136473/john-r-bradley/saudi-arabias-invisible-hand-in-the-arab-spring#
How the Kingdom is Wielding Influence Across the Middle East
Saudi Arabia's Invisible Hand in the Arab Spring
How the Kingdom is Wielding Influence Across the Middle East
Reading List
An annotated Foreign Affairs syllabus on Saudi politics.
Saudi Arabia has played a singular role throughout the Arab Spring. With a guiding hand -- and often an iron fist -- Riyadh has worked tirelessly to stage manage affairs across the entire region. In fact, if there was a moment of the Arab revolt that sounded the death knell for a broad and rapid transition to representative government across the Middle East, it came on the last day of February, when Saudi tanks rolled across the border to help put down the mass uprising that threatened the powers that be in neighboring Bahrain. The invasion served an immediate strategic goal: The show of force gave Riyadh's fellow Sunni monarchy in Manama the muscle it needed to keep control of its Shia-majority population and, in turn, its hold on power.
But that was hardly the only advantage King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud gained. The aggression quelled momentum in Saudi Arabia's oil-rich eastern province among the newly restive Shia minority who had been taking cues from Bahrain. The column of tanks also served as a symbolic shot across the bow of Iran: The brazen move was a clear signal from Riyadh to every state in the Middle East that it would stop at nothing, ranging from soft diplomacy to full-on military engagement, in its determination to lead a region-wide counterrevolution.
From the Arab Spring's beginning, Riyadh reached directly into local conflicts. As far back as January, the kingdom offered refuge to Tunisia's deposed leader, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. Eager that popular justice not become the norm for Arab dictators, Riyadh has steadfastly refused to extradite Ben Ali to stand trial. (He remains in Riyadh to this day.) Moreover, Ben Ali's statements, issued through his lawyer, have consistently called on Tunisians to continue the path of "modernization." For fear of upsetting his Saudi hosts, he has not been able to express what must be his horror as a secularist at the dramatic emergence of Ennahda ("Awakening"), the main Islamist party, on the Tunisian political scene. Ennahda's meteoric rise is widely believed to be, at least in part, bankrolled by Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries.
Islamists across the region are working in Riyadh's favor.
Islamists across the region are working in Riyadh's favor. As with
the fall of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the Saudis gained
newfound influence with the Muslim Brotherhood and its even more
hard-line Salfi allies, who reportedly take funds from the Saudis. The
Muslim Brotherhood has vaulted to prominence in the post-Mubarak era. It
draws hundreds of thousands to rallies. It looks set to sweep
forthcoming elections. After all, it is telling that Muslim Brotherhood
members took refuge in Saudi Arabia during the decades of persecution
under former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Today, the party
makes a good partner for Riyadh, as it never utters even a whisper of
criticism of what more radical Islamist outfits denounce as the Saudi
royal family's treacherous ties with the West. If Saudi Arabia
desperately backed Mubarak to his last days, in post-revolutionary Egypt
the kingdom is now closely connected to the country's new political
power brokers.
All of this makes the situation in Yemen look quite familiar. When President Ali Abdullah Saleh was injured in the June bombing of his presidential palace, he fled to (where else?) Saudi Arabia. When Saleh returned to his country last month, he found himself more indebted to Riyadh than ever. Essentially, Saudi medics had saved his life, and in a tribal region such personal debts are not quickly forgotten. But Saleh may not matter much: In the capital of Sana'a, the exhausted protesters have largely departed the main square they had occupied. It has been taken over by activists from Islah (or, the Islamist Congregation for Reform), the country's main Islamist party. Islah was founded by leading members of the powerful, Saudi-backed Hashid tribal confederation, whose decision to turn against Saleh was a key moment in the uprising. Whichever side emerges triumphant from the power struggle now under way, the Saudis have both eventualities -- either Saleh or the Hashids -- covered.
Looking at the future of the Middle East, perhaps the most decisive change could come in Syria. It was with a heavy dose of irony that King Abdullah condemned Syria for the murderous crackdown Damascus was waging against its own popular rebellion in early August. Of course, Riyadh has a less than exemplary human rights record, to say the least. Likewise, King Abdullah's announcement that he was withdrawing Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Damascus was less a protest against the savage brutality of the Syrian regime (if it was at all) as it was another chapter in Riyadh's ongoing effort to loosen Iran's grasp on the region's counterrevolution. The simultaneous decision by fellow Gulf Cooperation Council members -- Kuwait and Bahrain -- to likewise withdraw their ambassadors, followed by a communiqué from the Arab League expressing predictably muted misgivings about Damascus' ongoing massacres, indicated the kingdom's ability to line up allies and make them dance to the tune of the regional powerhouse.
If the Syrian regime collapses (which is hardly imminent but appearing more and more possible as peaceful demonstrations give way to armed insurrection), it would mean the end not only of a brutal dictatorship but also of the only other ostensibly secular Arab country apart from Tunisia -- another boon for Riyadh. However, in light of Saudi Arabia's hardened stance, the real question is what it envisions would happen in Syria if the regime were overthrown. Riyadh's hope, clearly, is that a post-Assad Syria would align itself with a new Sunni-led, more anti-Iran government in Damascus. That may be hoping against hope, at least in the short term, because Syria is more likely to descend into a bloody, sectarian-driven civil war than witness a smooth transition to a new government. Riyadh, though, is banking on the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies ultimately coming out on top. It is certainly true that, since most Syrians are Sunnis and the Muslim Brotherhood is the best organized of the opposition groups, they are the most likely to fill the vacuum in the long term.
If the Arab Spring had any hope of ushering in greater freedom and democracy, it would have had to challenge from the beginning the influence of Saudi Arabia, the region's Washington-allied superpower and its most antidemocratic, repressive regime. That is a tall order indeed. The tragic irony of the uprisings is that the exact opposite happened.
No comments:
Post a Comment