After the Sheikhs: The Coming Collapse of the Gulf Monarchies (36 page)

Overall, the branding of such opposition movements and the positioning of the Gulf monarchies as a better, safer alternative to Islamistdominated governments or other such scenarios has been highly effective. Indeed, as described in a recent book on the Arab Spring, these ‘…rulers became well versed in their routine of no alternative argumentation: towards the West, they posed as the only ones able to deter an Islamist takeover’.
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Moreover, it was argued that there is a now a ‘…sad irony that the powers in place have ended up believing their own fantasises about the Islamist threat; they not only displayed that card for external consumption, but they also fed their own masses with gory stories about the inevitability of… ruin’.
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And that the Gulf monarchies—and their now fallen Arab autocrat neighbours—have been responsible for ‘…rushing to enrol in the global War on Terror, provided that their domestic
opposition would fall under the extensive category of al-Qaeda supporters’. The anti-terrorism legislation and emergency laws that have been used to neutralise opponents have since been heavily criticised for being an ‘oxymoron to describe the suspension of the rule of law and the absolute vulnerability of the citizen’.
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In much the same way as the Islamist groups, some opposition movements in the region, especially in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia—where there are substantial Shia populations—are now being branded both as terrorists and as part of some greater plot to further Iran’s interests in the Gulf monarchies. Linked to growing hawkishness towards Iran, this has been another relatively straightforward and convenient mechanism in these states with which to portray opponents—no matter how peaceful—as being dangerous fifth column movements serving a foreign power or entity. Again this has allowed the monarchies to discredit opponents in the eyes of other citizens, while also allowing them to demonstrate their willingness to support Western policies on Iran. Frequently in Bahrain, for example, the government has claimed that the opposition is either being funded by Iran or is receiving weapons or other logistical support. In May 2011 military officials claimed that the opposition was made up of ‘traitors and saboteurs’ who were drawing ‘…guidance lines from Iran that drew the acts of sabotage and barbarism in the kingdom’.
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And even following the publication of an independent report into Bahrain’s crackdown in November 2011—as discussed below—which concluded that the ‘Iranians are [merely] propagandists and that they can’t be expected not to take advantage of the situation’ and that ‘…to say they were funding, agitating… we found no evidence of this’, Bahraini government officials still claimed that there was a link, stating that they had ‘evidence you cannot touch or see physically, but we know it is there’.
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Modernising forces

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

A case can even be made that the internet itself—predicted by many to lead to sweeping changes in such tightly controlled societies—was also successfully co-opted by the Gulf monarchies, at least in the early days. The blocking of offensive websites, including blogs critical of the regimes, has occurred, while many other basic internet communications methods such as email or messenger software can either be blocked or—more usefully—monitored by the state so as to provide information and details on opponents and opposition movements.
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Moreover, some Gulf monarchies have actively exploited internet communications, and arguably done so much better than most governments in developed states, with an array of ‘E-Government’ website services having been launched—most of which allow citizens to feel more closely connected to government departments and thus help echo the earlier era of direct, personal relations between the rulers and ruled.
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Meanwhile, as demonstrated, the rulers themselves have often established presences on the internet, and their self-glorifying websites usually also feature discussion fora to facilitate interaction between themselves (or rather their employees) and the general public. Many other lesser ruling family members, ministers, police chiefs, and other establishment figures in the region have also set up interactive Twitter feeds and Facebook fan sites for the same purposes, and some of these are now ‘followed’ by thousands of citizens and other well-wishers. The ruler of Dubai’s Twitter feed, for example, exceeded one million subscribers in July 2012. Tweeting on this success,
he emphasised the participatory nature of the software: ‘Together we came up with many social, humanitarian and cultural initiatives and I have personally benefited from your constructive thoughts. Thank you all, and I hope that we take our communication and interaction to the next level soon, for the good of our communities’.
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More recently a wave of new internet technologies—often loosely bundled under the banner of ‘Web 2.0’ applications—seems to be finally having the kind of impact on the region’s access to education and communications that would have been predicted or desired by the earlier modernisation theorists. Popularly defined as ‘facilitating participatory information sharing, interoperability, and user-centred design’ these applications allow users to connect to each other using ‘social media’ based on content created by themselves in cooperation with other users, rather than simply retrieving information from the internet in the format that is presented to them. Among the best examples of such applications are the more recent incarnations of Facebook, which is now no longer just focused on personal pages and fan sites but has become home to thousands of active discussion groups; the more recent versions of Twitter, which is now host to thousands of third party applications that aid users in finding and following the most appropriate content and personalities based on their interests; and YouTube, which allows regular users to upload, share, and comment on videos from their mobile phones, or even create their own television channels. While these and other Web 2.0 applications can still be blocked in their entirety by cautious regimes, this is now unlikely to happen in the Gulf monarchies as the inevitable outcry from the large numbers of users would be difficult or perhaps impossible to appease.

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

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

In many ways claims of a direct link between opposition activity and Web 2.0 applications in the Gulf monarchies appear much stronger than in North Africa, as the considerably higher internet and smart phone penetration and usage rates in these relatively more developed states indicate that most Gulf nationals—and the overwhelming majority of the younger generation—not only have the necessary access to such technologies, but are also well acquainted with their capabilities. As regards internet-enabled phones, for example, four of the Gulf monarchies now have the highest per capita penetration rates in the world, with 1030 for every 1000 persons in Bahrain, 1000 per 1000 in the UAE, 939 per 1000
in Kuwait, and 882 per 1000 in Qatar. This compares with an OECD average of only 785 per 1000.
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In 2011 it was also reported that high speed broadband internet subscriptions had risen massively in the region, with 50,000 new subscribers over the first half of the year in the UAE alone, taking the country’s total number of internet-enabled households to about 1.3 million. Over the next few years the penetration rate will continue to increase, as will the quality of access, with many of the Gulf monarchies having invested heavily in fibre optic networks. Interviewed in summer 2011, the chairman
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of the UAE’s largest state-backed telecommunications provider
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even claimed that the UAE was going to be ‘one of the top five connected countries in the world’ following government investments of more than $15 billion in such networks.
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Web 2.0 and social media usage in the region is a little harder to measure, nevertheless most indications are that it is increasingly rapidly. An April 2011 report published by the Governance and Innovation Program at the Dubai School of Government claimed that the total number of Arab Facebook users had increased by 30 per cent in the first quarter of that year, bringing the total to over 27 million.
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Only a year later, in May 2012, Facebook’s operating company announced that it had reached 45 million users in the region, with a penetration rate of about 67 per cent, and had decided to open a regional office in Dubai.
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Significantly, the 2011 report claimed that over 70 per cent of Arab users were in the age bracket of fifteen to twenty-nine years of age. It also estimated that there were over 1 million active Twitter users in the Arab world, who had collectively posted over 22 million tweets during the first quarter of 2011. Significantly the report claimed that the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait, together with the Lebanon were the five leading countries in the region in terms of the proportion of their population using social media, with over 400,000 Twitter users in Saudi Arabia and 200,000 Twitter users in the UAE. It was also estimated that there were about 4 million Facebook users in Saudi Arabia, and that over 50 per cent of the UAE’s population was using Facebook, while 36 per cent and 30 per cent of Qatar and Bahrains’ populations were using Facebook. Claims were also made in the 2011 that there had been a ‘substantial shift in the use of social media from social purposes towards civic and political action’ in the region, with social media usage being perceived by many of the report’s interviewees as being ‘mainly for organising people, disseminating information and raising awareness about… social movements’. Interestingly,
the majority of Tunisian and Egyptian interviewees also argued that their ousted regimes’ attempts to block social media access ‘…actually provided a boost to the [opposition] movements, spurring protesters to more decisive and creative action’.
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