Saudi imams warn against mixing of sports, politics and protest

Saudi Grand Mufti: Protesters are sinful

By James M. Dorsey

Saudi and ultra-conservative imams have warned in separate statements against the mixing of sports and politics and protests against autocratic regimes, which, according to some, results from of the mingling of the sexes in sports.

The warnings come against the backdrop of Saudi efforts to shield the Gulf from the wave of popular uprisings sweeping the Middle East and North Africa, renewed focus on the role of militant soccer fans opposing military rule in Egypt and pressure on the kingdom to allow women to compete for the first time in an international tournament during the London Olympics.

Saudi Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz Al-Sheikh quoted in the kingdom's Al Watan newspaper warned that the protests that have already toppled the leaders of Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen and brought Syria to the brink of civil war were sinful. "The schism, instability, the malfunctioning of security and the breakdown of unity that Islamic countries are facing these days is a result of the sins of the public and their transgressions," Sheikh Abdulaziz said.

Such sins include, according to Imam Abu Abdellah of As-Sunnah mosque in Kissimee, Florida, speaking in a video posted on the Internet, the mixing of the sexes at sports events. “In the past it was only men, now it is almost half half (in stadiums). Allah knows what happens afterwards. Either way it is bad. Either people go out, they are sensing and partying and drinking and all that, so that’s negative. And if they don’t, they go out and they demonstrate and they’re angry and they destroy property and they destroy cars and they destroy people’s business. Either way its haram (forbidden), things have to be done in moderation. These are the things that are associated with sports that the believers have to be careful with,” Abu Abedallah said.

“So there is nothing wrong with watching and practicing your favourite sport as long as you adhere to the norms. When it comes to the way you dress and the way you behave, where you’re going to be, what are you going to be listening to; are you going to be mingling in crowds you are not supposed to be mingling with? All of those things do matter when you are practicing or you are watching your favourite sport,” the imam said.

The clerics’ statements came as Saudi Arabia prepares for a summit of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in which it hopes to foist closer political and military cooperation on its largely reluctant co-members Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and the UAE. Bahrain, which last year brutally squashed with Saudi assistance an uprising against its minority Sunni Muslin rulers, is likely to be the only GCC state to fully endorse the notion of a political union.

The statements also come as International Olympics Committee president Jacques Rogge is under pressure to make good on his pledges earlier this year to stand for gender equality by banning Saudi Arabia from this year’s London Olympics if it fails to field women athletes. A Human Rights Watch report released in February, called on Saudi Arabia to protect women's equal right to sports and urged the IOC to live up to its charter, which prohibits discrimination, or face a ban similar to that imposed on Afghanistan in 1999 partly for its exclusion of female athletes.

With Qatar and Brunei expected to have women athletes for the first time this year in their delegations, Saudi Arabia would be the only country in the world that still refuses to allow women to compete. The kingdom has recently hinted that it would not stand against Saudi women living abroad competing, but would not field athletes from the kingdom itself.

In separate statements, two Saudi religious scholars admonished soccer players that bad behaviour could lead to a ban on public attendance of matches. It was not immediately clear what incidents of bad behaviour they were referring to.

Sheikh Abdullah bin Suleiman Al Manei, a member of the Gulf Kingdom’s supreme scholars committee and an advisor to King Abdullah warned that “the spread of such (bad) acts on play fields is a clear indicator of a decline in moral values and the transformation of sport from fair competition into bigotry. The continuation of these bad phenomena which pose a threat to the ethical values of our sons makes the attendance of these matches a hateful thing. This means that going to these matches could become prohibited because what is happening there has a strong negative impact on the society.”

In a statement of his own, Sheikh Abdullah Al Mutlaq, another member of the supreme committee, denounced players for allegedly faking incidents in a bid to get a referee to award a penalty in their team’s favour. “These are acts of deception, which is hated and forbidden in Islam…..the sin becomes worse when the player swears by Allah falsely…players should refrain from such wrong acts as they have become a bad example for the young generation,” Sheikh Al Mutlaq said without reference to specific incidents.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer, and a consultant to geopolitical consulting firm Wikistrat.

Trade unions reject World Cup-related Qatar labor measures and threaten global boycott

By James M. Dorsey

International trade unions this week rejected World Cup-related Qatari proposals to meet concerns about worker rights, including health and safety that violate international human and labor rights as well as principles the Gulf state had adopted as a member of the International Labor Organization ILO.

The unions said they were moving ahead with plans for a global campaign this summer under the motto 'No World Cup in Qatar without labor rights’, to deprive Qatar of its right to host the 2022 World Cup if it failed to align its labor legislation and workers’ condition with international standards.

“It is not too late to change the venue of the World Cup. This is not an industrial skirmish about wages; this is a serious breach in regard to human and labor rights. The country is incredibly wealthy and is portraying itself as a model country. That is simply not true. 

Our members are football fans and they don’t want to see the game played in a country that practices slavery,” Sharan Burrow, General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), which represents 175 million workers in 153 countries, said in a telephone interview.

A spokesman for the Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee declined to comment on Ms. Burrow’s statements.

The looming confrontation between Qatar and the international workers’ movement comes at a sensitive time for the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) that incorporates Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman. The GCC is preparing for a summit in Riyadh later this month to discuss a political union that would allow Saudi Arabia to pressure the smaller states to fall in line with its more conservative social and foreign policies at a time that the Middle East and North Africa are experiencing popular revolts in demand of greater freedom.

The issue of labor rights is also sensitive because several Gulf states have populations that are in majority foreign. Beyond the commercial and economic advantages of a cheap pool of labor, discussion of any kind of rights for non-locals raises the specter of the minority Gulf population in countries like Qatar, the UAE, and Kuwait no longer having a country that is theirs and which they control.

“It’s a real problem. Everybody knows that,” said a source close to Qatari and Gulf thinking on the issue against the backdrop of the UAE and Bahrain alongside Qatar seeking to project themselves as global sports hubs. An attempt by Bahrain to project an image of business as normal and distract attention from continuing popular discontent despite the suppression of last year’s revolt by letting Formula 1 go ahead last month backfired with protests overshadowing the race.

Ms. Burrow said the unions were seeking an urgent Qatari acceptance and implementation of international human and labor rights because the Gulf state was about to start construction of World Cup-related infrastructure.

Qatar’s 2022 Supreme Committee this week issued a second tender for the project, design, commercial and construction management of one of the 12 stadiums it is planning for the tournament, nine of which will be newly built. The three remaining stadiums already exist but need to be refurbished. The committee earlier tendered the contract for a master planning and lead design consultant for the stadiums.

“Gradual change is not good enough. The urgency is because the stadiums are about to be constructed in a serious way. Companies are gearing up their supply chains and costing infrastructure on a model of modern day slavery. We want that to change and companies might have to adjust their costing and pricing accordingly,” Ms. Burrow said.

Qatar with a majority expatriate population expects to import up to one million foreign workers to complete infrastructure needed both for the World Cup and the development of the energy-rich nation.

In a statement, the ITUC said it had requested an urgent meeting with Qatari labor minister Sultan bin Hassan, charging that “workers are dying in Qatar as they build World Cup stadiums and infrastructure, and suffer large scale exploitation every day.” Ms. Burrow said she had yet to receive a reply to the letter, which was also sent to world soccer body FIFA.

The union leader said that some 200 Nepalese died last year in Qatar, a favored destination for the country’s low skilled expat labor; 30 of them while on a construction job while another approximately 70 as a result of the country’s brutal summer temperatures that rise above 40 degrees Celsius. It was not clear whether any of these deaths were directly related to World Cup-related construction. “We quite confidently predict that more people will die off the field than there are players on the field,” Ms. Burrow said. She said she would soon be travelling to Nepal for discussions with the government and trade unions.

A spokeswoman for Ms. Burrow pointed to a report in The Himalaya Times that described Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia as “graveyards for young Nepali workers in the 25-42 years age group.”

The unions in a meeting with FIFA last November gave the soccer body and FIFA six months to ensure that workers in Qatar have “the legal right to organize themselves in free, independent trade unions without punishment or interference from authorities” that could “collectively bargain” with employers.

“Construction workers, the majority who are migrant workers are risking their lives today as they work in poor and unsafe conditions with low wages. They need trade union rights today to protect them", the ITUC statement quoted Ambet Yuson, General Secretary of Building and Wood Workers International, as saying.

Ms. Burrow said the fight for workers’ rights in Qatar was a battle for labor rights in the region. She said of the three GCC states – Oman, Bahrain and Kuwait – that legally allow trade unions only Bahrain had enshrined international standards in its legislation. She said Bahrain’s progress had however been marred by last year’s Saudi-backed brutal repression of a popular uprising in which teachers, nurses, doctors and others were detained and tortured for demanding basic democratic rights.

“Bahrain was on track until it came under pressure. The prime minister admitted to us that there were concerns from the Gulf states around them, Saudi Arabia in particular but also Qatar etc. Bahrain at least had public recognition of the rights if not realization of those rights in their totality because of the pressure of the Gulf states,” Ms. Burrow said.

She said a Qatari proposal for the creation of a labor committee and abolishment of its controversial system of sponsorship of foreign labor was a “far cry” from union demands for a free and independent trade union and equitable and human working conditions. 

Qatar is seeking to project itself as a show case member of the global community, “yet it is so far outside the basic human framework of human and labor rights” that it need to choose between being part of the international community or a model of 21^st century slavery, Ms. Burrow said.

Qatari media this week quoted Labor Undersecretary Hussain Al Mulla as saying that the country’s emir was considering a plan to establish a Qatari-led labor committee that would represent workers’ interests as well as an abolition of the sponsorship system that would stop short of allowing foreigners to freely change jobs. Qatar recently abandoned the requirement that foreign workers surrender their passports to their Qatari employers. Mr. Al Mulla said the plan had already been endorsed by the Qatari prime minister.

Denouncing conditions of foreign workers in Qatar as 21^st century slavery, Ms. Burrow said unions were demanding not only improved health and safety conditions but also the ability to live freely in the community, bring their families and move freely in and out of the country. “Current conditions are absolute enslavement to the employer,” Ms. Burrow said.

She said Mr. Al Mulla’s proposal for a labor committee involved creation of a government controlled body rather than an independent trade union. The way Qatar planned to abolish the sponsorship system failed to create a level playing field or guarantee workers’ freedom of movement, she said.

Qatar 2022 Supreme Committee Secretary General Hassan Al Thawadi pledged early this year in a speech at Carnegie Mellon University’s campus in Doha that the Gulf state would adhere to international labor standards.

"Major sporting events shed a spotlight on conditions in countries. There are labor issues here in the country, but Qatar is committed to reform. We will require that contractors impose a clause to ensure that international labor standards are met. Sport and football in particular, is a very powerful force. Certainly we can use it for the benefit of the region." Mr. Al Thawadi said.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.

Qatar to legalize trade union as Saudi Arabia pushes closer Gulf cooperation

By James M. Dorsey

Qatar, in a bid to fend off an international trade union campaign against its hosting of the 2022 World Cup, is taking cautious steps to meet demands backed by world soccer body FIFA, to allow the establishment of the emirate’s first trade union and to scrap its controversial system of sponsorship of foreign labour condemned by human rights groups as modern day slavery.

The Qatari concessions come as the Gulf state in which foreigners account for a majority of the population envisions recruiting up to one million overseas workers for massive infrastructure projects. The projects will all benefit the World Cup but many, including a new airport, expansion of the transport system and hotel and residential compounds were on the drawing board irrespective of the sports tournament.

The Qatari decision increases pressure on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the two members of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) that still ban unions to follow suit. Bahrain, Oman and Kuwait have all legalized trade unions but Bahrain is the only other Gulf state to have abolished its foreign labour sponsorship system.

Neither Saudi Arabia nor the UAE are however likely to follow Qatar’s example any time soon. Qatar’s concession to FIFA and the international trade unions comes at a time that Saudi Arabia is cajoling fellow GCC states into moving from a council to a union to bolster the ability of the conservative Gulf monarchies to confront Iran and prevent the Arab uprisings sweeping the Middle East and North Africa from further encroaching on their fiefdoms.

Persistent reports suggest that Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, the first Gulf state to have virtually run out of oil that last year brutally squashed a popular revolt with the assistance of the kingdom and the UAE, will declare a union at a GCC summit scheduled to be held in Riyadh later this month.

Saudi foreign minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, in a speech this week to a GCC youth conference delivered on his behalf by his deputy cautioned that "cooperation and coordination between the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in its current format may not be enough to confront the existing and coming challenges, which require developing Gulf action into an acceptable federal format. The Gulf union, when it is realized, God willing, will yield great benefits for its peoples, such as in foreign policy with the presence of a supreme Gulf committee coordinating foreign policy decisions that reorders group priorities and realizes group interests," he said.

The Riyadh summit is expected to discuss the outline of a union first proposed by Saudi King Abdullah last December. The Saudis, fearful that Bahrain’s rebellious Shiite Muslim majority could spark further unrest in their predominantly Shiite, restive, oil-rich Eastern Province, envision a GCC political union in which they would be the major power that would adopt joint foreign and defence policies.

Bahraini security forces clash almost daily with Shiite protesters despite last year’s crackdown which pushed demonstrators out of the island capital’s main square. Bahraini opposition forces fear that a union with the kingdom will further strengthen hardliners in the ruling Sunni Muslim Al Khalifa family and open the door to a permanent presence of Saudi troops on the island.

A Gulf union would also bolster royal resistance in some states like the UAE to political liberalization and greater rights as embodied in the Qatari decision to legalize trade unions. Qatar has consistently charted its own course that has put it at odds with the Saudis. Qatar has backed in various countries in revolt the Muslim Brotherhood, a group deeply distrusted by the kingdom, while the Saudis have supported the more conservative Salafis.

GCC states have also failed to achieve unanimity on a wide range of other issues including monetary union, the building of a causeway linking Qatar and Bahrain and security front information sharing as well as the creation of a central command. The failure to cooperate more closely on security prompted by mutual distrust as well as lack of confidence in US reliability has led to the recent scuppering of the installation of a joint missile shield as a defence against Iran.

For its part, Qatar, by hosting the 2022 World Cup, the world’s largest sporting event, and bidding for various other big ticket tournaments has opened itself to international scrutiny as well as demands from various groups to liberalize so that it as a global hub can accommodate issues such as alcohol and sexual diversity that go against the region’s conservative grain. A GCC political union could complicate the Qatari balancing act.

The Qatari union concession came as a six-month ultimatum by the International Trade Union Confederations (ITUC) that the Gulf state legalize unions and ensure that labour conditions meet international standards came to an end. The ITUC, which represents 175 million workers in 153 countries, had threatened Qatar with a global campaign that would denounce under the slogan, 'No World Cup in Qatar without labour rights,' the Gulf state as a slave driver.

The ITUC had charged earlier in a report that the working conditions of migrant workers in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates were "inhuman." Entitled ‘Hidden faces of the Gulf miracle,’ the multi-media report demanded that Qatar prove that migrant workers building infrastructure for the 2022 World Cup were not subject to inhuman conditions.

Qatari media quoted Labour Undersecretary Hussain Al Mulla as saying that the country’s emir was considering the plan to establish an independent Qatari-led labour committee to represent workers’ interests and an abolition of the sponsorship system that would stop short of allowing foreigners to freely change jobs.

The authorities have recently abandoned the requirement that foreign workers surrender their passports to their Qatari employers. Mr. Al Mulla said the plan had already been endorsed by the Qatari prime minister. It was not immediately clear if the Qatari moves would satisfy the ITUC.

“We wanted to set up the labour committee to help employees and lift off the pressure we and other Gulf countries have been under from several organisations. We are often asked about the non-existence of labour unions to defend labourers in Qatar. We had a labour committee during the days of oil companies. However, the situation in the Gulf is somewhat different because there are few Qataris who are labourers,” Mr. Al Mulla said. He said foreigners would have the right to vote in the committee but would not be able to become board members.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.

Lebanese victory boosts national unity and spotlights Gulf problems

Abu Dhabi's Mohammed bin Zayed stadium

By James M. Dorsey

Lebanon advanced for the first time in its soccer history to the fourth and final Asian qualifying round for the 2014 World Cup despite losing this week to the United Arab Emirates. In doing so, the Lebanese squad cemented soccer’s role as a rallying point for a country divided and scarred by years of bitter civil war afraid that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s sectarian-tainted brutal crackdown could spill into the streets of Lebanese cities.

In a country where almost every facet of life is defined by sectarian fault lines, Lebanon’s advance had people from all walks of life glued to television sets and computer screens in offices, university lecture halls, sports bars and living rooms. Schools closed early for students to be able to watch the match.

The Lebanese success even if it was by default strengthened soccer’s unifying role two months after the national team’s defeat of South Korea in December brought tens of thousands into the streets of the Lebanese capital Beirut waving the country's red and white flag with a green cedar in the middle. As Lebanon scored against South Korea sectarian chants in Beirut’s Cite Sportive stadium were replaced with roars of "Minshan Allah, Libnan yallah'' - "For God's Sake, Lebanon Come On'' as fans belonging to the country’s multiple sects and political groups united behind their national squad.

Nonetheless, fighting last month between supporters of Mr. Assad, and those who oppose his regime in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli signaled just how fragile that sense of national unity is. Three people were killed and many more were injured in 24 hours of fighting.

Meanwhile, in a weird twist of events, Lebanese fans attending Wednesday’s match in Abu Dhabi against the UAE spotlighted a key weakness of soccer in the Gulf that has fuelled some of the criticism of Qatar’s winning in late 2010 of the right to host the 2022 World Cup: the lack of a fan base eager to come to the stadium to cheer their team.

The estimated 6,000 Lebanese fans outnumbered the Emiratis on Wednesday in Abu Dhabi’s Al Nahyan Stadium. To be sure with an estimated 100,000 Lebanese expats resident in the UAE many of the Lebanese did not have to travel far for the match. Nonetheless, news reports said that Lebanese supporters had come from as far as Brazil and Britain to support their team.

The Gulf News reported that Emiratis boycotted the match because their team did not stand a chance irrespective of whether it defeated Lebanon or not of reaching the World Cup finals as it had done once before in 1990.

While that may be true it evades the structural problem with filling stadiums in a part of the world where the local population often constitutes a minority of the total population. In the UAE, locals account for at best 15% of the population whose vast majority are expatriates.

A recent survey by Abu Dhabi daily The National concluded that the Mohamed bin Zayed Stadium of the emirate’s Al Jazira Sports & Culture club was among the UAE’s most popular sport venues. The stadium owes it popularity only in part to its futuristic design that lacks a runway track and allows fans to be seated closer to the field.

Equally important is the fact that Al Jazira has some of the highest attendance figures in the Gulf because its former chief executive officer, Englishman Phil Anderton, a former marketeer for Scottish Rugby, Coca Cola and Procter & Gamble, was willing to go places others in the Gulf shied away from because they were afraid of upsetting the fragile demographic apple cart.

In a bid to raise match attendance and integrate his club with the community, Mr. Anderton reached out to the expatriate population – a move Gulf clubs controlled by the region’s ruling families have avoided out of fear that this would give foreigners a stake that could encourage them over time to demand greater rights.

Mr. Anderton’s strategy worked. Within a year attendance figures at the Mohammed bin Zayed Stadium had quadrupled drawing a record crowd of 28,164 for a match against Al Wasl. Redevelopment of the stadium has increased its capacity from 15,000 to 42,000. Ironically, the increased number of expats has sparked greater enthusiasm among Emiratis.

"The number of Al Jazira's home fans is really impressive as they really get a good crowd. You enjoy the game thrice as much than the stadium being more than half empty. Also, we see a lot of expats at their games so it's great that they are showing an interest in the Pro League,” The National quoted rival Al Nasr fan Faisal Hamadi as saying.

“We looked at who was coming and who wasn't and why. There was a lack of awareness and a range of misconceptions - they thought it was amateur or for Emiratis only. From this we developed a brand position to encourage people interested in football to come to the club. With the transitory nature few felt a connection so we are trying to unite the city through the club with the tag line ‘Pride of Abu Dhabi'. We developed a full marketing plan with advertising and PR as well as going into local schools and communities to try and change perceptions and raise awareness,” Mr. Anderson said in an interview last year.

“We showcased our star players and organized tournaments for the community in our facilities. Once we encouraged people to come to the games and feel part of the club we had to deliver a product. We needed to make sure that we treated people well when they came, with food in a clean well sign-posted stadium and then we needed to put on a good show where football is at the core of other entertainment options - it's more an American model,” he added.

Mr. Anderton’s approach broke with Gulf practice in more than one way. Arguing that teams can only exploit their home advantage if they have the crowd cheering them on during matches, he also argued in favor of turning clubs dependent on the politically motivated largesse of their royal and tribal owners into commercially viable entities. 

“Historically clubs here didn't have the requirement to go into the commercial side of things but we want to develop sponsorship, merchandise, ticketing and hospitality from using our facilities 365 days a year via leasing in order to set down a sustainable business model, which inevitably leads to success on the field,” Mr. Anderton said.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.

Gulf states keep winds of change at bay – but for how long?

Bahrain elections (Source: @bna_ar)

By James M. Dorsey

Oil wealth and demographics have so far largely shielded a majority of the six Gulf Cooperation Council members from the brunt of the Arab revolt sweeping the Middle East and North Africa, but have hardly insulated them from the winds of change.

Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar have until now successfully sought to ring fence themselves by supporting Bahrain's brutal squashing earlier this year of mass anti-government protests, bankrolling Oman, splashing billions of dollars on social spending at home and banking on the fact that a majority in the Gulf prefers reform to revolt and the fears of nationals of the smaller Gulf states that public protest would open a Pandora's box with expatriate majorities putting forward demands of their own.

The measures are likely to at best buy the Gulf states time. Their ring fencing strategy is threatened both from within the GCC as well as by the revolt elsewhere in the region and could be undermined if a drop in oil prices makes it more difficult for Gulf governments to maintain their financial largess.

The crackdown in Bahrain backed by GCC troops has moved the protests out of the capital Manama and into Shiite villages, split the opposition along sectarian lines and enabled the ruling Khalifa family to keep for now keep the opposition in check. It has failed however to generate a credible national dialogue that addresses widespread political and economic grievances The point was driven home this week with jailing by a military court of 36 people, including 20 medics who treated activists wounded during the protests and two handball players, to sentences from five to life for participation in the demonstrations.

If Bahrain’s festering problems could at any time abruptly and radically upset the Gulf apple cart, Oman could break the mould of buying off populations with spending and pro-forma baby steps towards more representation by granting its elected Shura or advisory council greater legislative powers. A third more voters will be allowed to vote on October 15 in elections called after mass anti-government protests earlier this year that focused on higher wages, more jobs, an end to graft and more powers for the council rather than a change of government.

Omani leader Sultan Qaboos bin Said, who has ruled Oman since he ousted his father in 1970, has yet to announce how extensive the council’s legislative powers will be. Nonetheless, granting the council such powers sets the Omani council apart from similar assemblies elsewhere in the Gulf with the exception of Kuwait and Bahrain whose parliaments have long had legislative powers because they are being granted as a result of the revolt sweeping the region and knocking on the door of conservative Gulf states.

This week’s by-elections in Bahrain intended to fill 18 parliamentary seats left vacant after members of the opposition Islamist Al Wefaq party resigned did little to restore credibility to the island’s political process or the government’s claim that they demonstrated its commitment to political reform. Only 17 per cent of registered voters cast their vote after the party declared a boycott in protest against a constitution that it says disallows equal representation by reorganizing election districts to favor Sunni candidates.

Municipal elections this week in Saudi Arabia, the kingdom’s second, and, in the United Arab Emirates next week for a powerless federal council, half of whose members are appointed, do little to really advance the political process. In an acknowledgement of the winds of change, Saudi king Abdullah announced that women would be allowed to vote and stand as candidates for the country’s advisory council but only in the next election four years from now. The government earlier this year was able to quell protests in its predominantly Shiite, oil-rich Eastern Province. Turnout in Thursday’s election was low with activists calling for a boycott because the toothless councils demonstrated the government’s refusal to empower the public.

Nationals in the UAE as well as in Qatar have been reluctant to take their grievances public because they constitute a minority of their countries’ populations and fear that protest could inspire expatriates, who form a majority, to demand a greater stake in their adopted homes. Nonetheless, criticism of the UAE federation’s is expressed behind closed doors, including a sense among the northern emirates that they benefit far less from the country’s oil wealth than Abu Dhabi, which has the most significant reserves, and Dubai. The UAE has in recent months cracked down on critical voices and reportedly invested a half a billion dollars in the creation of a mercenary force for the eventuality of public protests.

Nevertheless, the Gulf states have by and large in recent months been able to contain whatever impulse for revolt has reared its head. Social spending and cosmetic change however are unlikely to address widespread simmering discontent, much of which involve the same issues that have this year already sparked protests that overthrew the leaders of Egypt, Tunisia and Libya and have the regimes of Syria and Yemen teetering on the brink.

With an official unemployment rate of ten per cent, Saudi Arabia has to create 5 million jobs for nationals by 2030. In a report last week, HSBC Holdings Plc warned that the kingdom could cut output if falling prices threaten the financing of its budget and $130 billion social spending and stimulus plan. HSBC said it expected an average $90 a barrel oil price next year, a 15 per cent drop compared to its current price of $105, and the point at which the kingdom could decide to reduce production.

For now, most Gulf leaders, like the monarchs of Morocco and Jordan who have been invited to join the GCC, have the advantage that their populations yearn for reform rather than revolution. The Moroccan and Jordanian kings have responded with political reforms that have stopped protests from escalating but have yet to prove that they meet the calls for change. Most Gulf states have yet to follow suit. Their reluctance to be proactive rather than reactive has so far shielded them from the revolt. The question is for how long and at what price.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.

Playing with fire: Gulf Arabs and Israelis tacitly explore cooperation amid Israeli diplomatic tsunami

Egyptian protesters scale the walls of the building housing the Israeli embassy in Cairo (Source: AP Photo/Amr Nabil)

By James M. Dorsey

Amid the diplomatic tsunami hitting Israel with its embassy in Cairo stormed by protesters, its relations with Turkey at an all-time low, the United Nations set to recognize Palestinian statehood and the influence of the United States, its closest ally, substantially diminished, conservative Gulf states and Israel are quietly exploring common ground.

Both Israel and the Gulf states are eager to curb the ten month-old wave of anti-government protests sweeping the Middle East and North Africa that have already toppled the leaders of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya and are shaking the fundaments of autocratic regimes in Syria and Yemen.

Similarly, the storming this weekend of the Israeli embassy in Cairo by protesters led by militant soccer fans raises the specter of the rule of the street, sending chills down the spine of Israeli and Gulf leaders. If Israel’s ambassador to Turkey was last week expelled by the government, Israel’s ambassador to Egypt was driven out of the country by protesters against the will of their rulers.

Israel and the Gulf states are also worried about the emergence of Egypt’s Sinai desert as a largely abandoned frontier for weapons smuggling and human trafficking that could become a launching pad for attacks on Israel alongside the Gaza Strip that is controlled by Hamas, the militant Palestinian Islamist group. This weekend’s storming of the Israeli embassy followed last month’s killing of five Egyptian soldiers in a border skirmish sparked by a cross-border attack on an Israeli bus.

Lost in the focus on the storming of the Israeli embassy with its potential implications for the prospects of Israeli-Palestinian peace was the fact that the nearby Saudi embassy was targeted too. The protesters vented their anger at the treatment of Egyptian pilgrims returning from the holy city of Mecca, who had been delayed at Jeddah airport for days and insulted by Saudi airport officials for putting ousted President Mubarak on trial for responsibility for the deaths of hundreds killed in the protests early this year that forced him out of office. In a telltale sign, Gulf television stations, including Al Jazeera, initially offered limited coverage of the protests in front of the embassies and launched into live coverage only when the extent of the demonstrations could no longer be ignored.

Finally, Israel and the Gulf states both see Iran as a major threat to regional stability and do not want to see the Islamic republic succeed in its alleged efforts to develop a nuclear weapons capability.

If the protests against the Israeli and Saudi embassies complicate the feelers being put out by Gulf states and Israel, it benefits, in a perverse twist of logic, Egypt’s ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) despite the protesters chanting of slogans that demanded an end to military rule and compared SCAF head Field Marshal Mohamed Tantawi to Mr. Mubarak.

The storming of the Israeli embassy in particular shifts the focus of attention to Israel and away from mounting discontent with the continued use of military tribunals for civilians, the convolutions in the trial against Mr. Mubarak trial, the complex negotiations to draft an electoral law and the military’s failure to set dates for parliamentary elections. The embassy incidents further weaken anti-military opposition by driving a wedge among the protesters with liberals warning that the popular revolt was reeling out of control.

In many ways, Turkey’s tough stance on Israel – lowering of diplomatic relations, suspending military ties and pledging to have Turkish warships escort future aid ships attempting to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza – has put Egypt and other Arab states on the line. It is likely to complicate any Gulf effort to tacitly cooperate with Israel in furthering perceived common interests. Egypt, the Gulf leaders and other Arab rulers will find it difficult to be seen as taking a less firm stand against Israel than non-Arab Turkey and fear that failure to do so could fuel public discontent.

Nonetheless, Dubai’s Khaleej Times published days after the announcement of Turkey’s tougher stance towards Israel and on the day that Israeli embassy staff fled Egypt a relatively rare op-ed piece written by an Israeli businesswoman and former foreign ministry official that described the lack of commercial, economic and technical cooperation between Israel and its Arab neighbors as a “lose-lose situation for everyone.”

Naava Mashiah argued that “Israel has been spearheading research and innovation to overcome a harsh climate and water scarcity. But there is very little knowledge sharing between Israel and other countries in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region. Although food security would best be addressed in the framework of a regional peace, the absence of such peace between Israel and its neighbors should not get in the way of cooperation on this issue, given how critical the situation facing the region is.”

Ms. Mashiah’s comments played on Arab concerns that rising food prices were a key factor in prompting Arabs across the region to take to the streets. She noted that the Arab world imports 50 per cent of its food requirements and need to become self-sufficient and less dependent on volatile world markets despite the fact that they have limited arable land and a shortage of water supplies.

“Israel, for its part, has made much progress in crop yields, green houses technologies, seed acclimatization, drip irrigation, dew collectors, waste-water management and other unique water technology innovations. Shouldn’t the successful results of high crop yields in arid climates be shared amongst other countries in the region? Time is a big factor. R&D investment is time consuming and starting research from scratch is not the same as benefitting from previous discoveries. De-nationalizing technologies and sharing knowledge is the way forward. The sooner we realize this, the better we can deal with the urgent challenge that all countries of this region share,” Ms. Mashiah wrote.

Israel and the Gulf states no doubt share a host of common political and economic interests. Yet, the opportunity to capitalize on that communality is shrinking at the very moment that they would benefit most from increased cooperation. Nonetheless, the risks involved in taking those feelers a step further grow by the day as the fallout of Turkey’s move becomes increasingly apparent and emotions take a front seat as the Palestinians gear up in the United Nation for recognition of their statehood in what is likely be a largely symbolic victory, but one that could dramatically change the legal playing field on which Israelis and Palestinians fight their battles.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore and the author of the blog, The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.