Revolt Against The Monarchies

Revolt In The Middle East: Arab Monarchies Next? – Analysis
24 October, 2012 – By: James M. Dorsey – Eurasia Review

Arab monarchs pride themselves on having so far largely managed widespread discontent in their countries with a combination of financial handouts, artificial job creation, social investment and in the cases of Jordan and Morocco, some constitutional reform. Yet, in the shadow of the escalating civil war in Syria, it is monarchies like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Jordan that are on the cusp of the region’s convoluted transition from autocracy to more open political systems.

To be sure, the situations in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Jordan differ substantially from one another. Yet, individually and taken together they feed the worst fear of monarchs and their Western backers: a successful popular revolt in one monarchy will open the door to serious challenges to autocratic royal rule in the rest of the region’s mostly energy-rich monarchies. And underlying the differing circumstances is a deeply felt sense of social, economic and political disenfranchisement of the people that fuels the discontent in all three nations.
Playing the sectarian card

A 26-year old Shiite in the Eastern Province, the oil-rich heartland of Saudi Arabia, has come to symbolise the threat to the kingdom’s ruling family. Khalid al-Labad, who was on a wanted list because of his willingness to protest in a country that bans all demonstrations, was killed last month by security forces as he sat on a plastic chair in front of his house in silent protest in the rundown town of Awamiya. Two of his teenage relatives also died in the attack. Their death brought to 16 the number of people killed in the last year in clashes between protesters and security forces.

As in Bahrain last year before the ruling family opted for the sectarian card and brutally cracked down on calls for reform, protesters in the Eastern Province are only calling for equal opportunity in employment, an end to religious discrimination, as well as the release of political prisoners, and not the departure of the ruling Al Saud family.

In Bahrain, the minority Sunni Al Khalifa monarchy succeeded in temporarily crushing mass protests by the majority Shiites and driving them out of the capital Manama. However the frustration and anger in Bahrain continues to bubble to the surface in protests mostly in villages on the Gulf island more than a year after the Saudi-backed crackdown. Two teenaged Shias killed in recent weeks symbolised the popular unrest. …more