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A Survey of Saudi Arabia Ljanuary 7Th 2006 UKCOVER CMYK Cyan Magenta Yellow Black A long walk A survey of Saudi Arabia l January 7th 2006 Republication, copying or redistribution by any means is expressly prohibited without the prior written permission of The Economist C B M R Y G K W C B M R Y G K W The Economist January 7th 2006 A survey of Saudi Arabia 1 A long walk Also in this section All in the family The Al Sauds run everything. Page 3 Glacier in the desert Ever so slowly, Saudi society is moving forward. Page 5 Keeping the faith A very special kind of Islam. Page 7 A Mecca for money The economy is doing almost too well for its own good. Page 9 Saudi Arabia seems a law unto itself: rich, unequal, uncompromising and unchanging. But, cautiously and almost imperceptibly, it is moving forward, says Max Rodenbeck AUDI ARABIA is hard to pin down. Re- mese twins. Many people who live there, S cent book titles, strong on words such and not just the foreigners who still make as crisis, threat, secrets and terror, seem to up the bulk of the workforce, nd the envi- suggest that this is a dark and desperate ronment hostile. It is hot, parched, socially place. Newspaper headlines echo the prickly, intellectually sterile, politically op- gloom with reports of bombings and pressive and legally capricious: minor in- shoot-outs. Opinion columns bemoan the fringements can lead to unpleasant en- fanaticism of its youth, the remoteness of counters with roving religious enforcers. its rulers and the power of its clerics. But other residents, including plenty of ex- Yet the latest economic reports picture a patriates, love the winter sunshine, the country in the prime of health where fast- open spaces, the easy prots and the fam- unfolding reforms promise a sustained ily-oriented lifestyle. Every critic who rolls rise in living standards and an increasingly his eyeballs over excesses of religious zeal equitable spread of wealth. In the year just has a contented counterpart warmed by ended, Saudi Arabia chalked up a 7% rise the all-encompassing faith. Each angry in GDP, a 50% surge in oil exports and a word about the intractability of Saudi bu- 100% leap in prices on a stockmarket that is reaucracy or the arrogance of princes is now worth $600 billion. Moreover, 2005 matched by praise for the light taxes, the re- was the third successive year of similar assuring prudence of government policy growth. Although high oil prices clearly and the generosity of ordinary Saudis. helped, the biggest rise was in such oil-free pursuits as nance, manufacturing and Family secrets tourism, with the holy places attracting a If Saudi Arabia remains such a conun- record 6m visitors. Last year the country drum, the Saudis themselves are partly to won admission to the World Trade Orga- blame. After all, the place was built and nisation. More surprisingly, it was also continues to be run by a family. Families Acknowledgments judged by the World Bank to have the best like privacy, and colossally rich and con- The wise and generous advice of many people went into the overall environment in the region for do- servative Muslim ones, such as the Al making of this survey. Special thanks are owed to the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA) and to ing business, outperforming even such Sauds, doubly so. Getting a visa to visit the Faiza Ambah, Beshr Bakheet and Ibrahim al-Mugaiteeb. high-yers as Dubai. country can be tricky. Subjects such as the A visit to the kingdom can generate national budget are not considered t for A list of sources can be found online equally clashing impressions. This is a close public scrutiny. Scandals tend to be www.economist.com/surveys place that, infamously, chops o the swept under costly carpets. hands and heads of malefactors, but its ex- The kingdom’s Islamic conservatism is An audio interview with the author is at cellent hospitals also pioneer such micro- of a peculiar kind. Detractors call it Wah- www.economist.com/audio surgical miracles as the separation of Sia- habism, after the 18th-century puritan re-1 2 A survey of Saudi Arabia The Economist January 7th 2006 2 former whose family alliance with the Al SYRIA to share the radicals’ perception that their Sauds laid the foundation for their even- faith itself is under threat, whether from tual conquest of Arabia. Saudis call it Han- IRAQ the benign inuence of cultural globalisa- AN balism, after a man who, a thousand years D tion or the malign force of what many see R O earlier, founded the most restrictive and J as American-led Crusader imperialism. KUWAIT least popular of the four accepted schools IRAN Like other people, Saudis want to be mod- Hijaz of Sunni Muslim jurisprudence. In fact, Najd Jubeil ern but also to retain their identity. At most Saudis now profess to something Damman BAHRAIN present, they are torn between those who more of a hybrid, mixing local traditions Red SeaMedina QATAR Dubai seek to modernise Islam and those who Riyadh with modern currents. Yanbu U.A.E. prefer to Islamise modernity. Whatever it is called, most people Saudi Arabia can no longer be regarded Jeddah SAUDI ARABIA would agree that Saudi Islam is rigid and Mecca EASTERN as a simple place where an obscenely oil- uncompromising, leaving a gap between PROVINCE rich king holds absolute sway over Bed- ideal and practice that provokes accusa- ouin subjects controlled by cash and a SUDAN NAJRAN OMAN tions of hypocrisy. It is also self-righteous bleakly puritan Islam. It is now a complex, and more than a little xenophobic. The ERITREA diverse and highly urbanised society, not kingdom is the only country in the world, insulated from the world but rudely ex- Main Saudi oil fields YEMEN 500 km except perhaps North Korea, where the posed to it, where citizens increasingly practice of all faiths but one is ocially long to be able to inuence the direction of banned. Even other forms of Islam are tween the citizen and the state, and be- change and expect their leaders to earn le- frowned upon. That is not surprising, be- tween eort and reward in the workplace. gitimacy. For example, the Majlis al Shura, cause other Muslims tend to regard such And then there was September 11th the kingdom’s loyal, all-appointed proto- Saudi rules as forbidding women to drive 2001, when 15 young Saudis helped steer parliament, has let it be known that it will cars or imposing the death penalty for several passenger planes into American approve new taxes only if it is granted full sorcery as seriously backward. Pam- landmarks. This act of mass murder thrust oversight of how the money will be spent. pered Saudi clerics still see relations with the kingdom into the hostile glare of global the wider world as a zero-sum game in public opinion. The sheer dastardliness of Twin pillars which every adoption of some modern the deed, and the mumbled approval of Oil and Islam continue to dene Saudi habit or gadget is seen as a loss for the pu- some Saudis (much to the embarrassment Arabia’s room for manoeuvre. With global rity of Islam. This breeds suspicion and of the rest), brought on a bout of Saudi- demand unlikely to wane in the foresee- mistrustand occasional ridicule. bashing. The Saudis, for their part, bridled able future and reserves elsewhere dimin- History, too, sets the kingdom apart. at being described in Washington as a ishing, oil will continue to keep the king- Few outsiders realise that this is one of kernel of evil, particularly when their dom rich for decades to come. At the same only four Muslim countries that were own country, starting in the spring of time, the Saudis’ attachment to their faith never colonised by Europe, and the only 2003, itself began to suer from terrorism. is not diminishing; it may even be growing one never invaded. All the others that es- All this has made an already confused stronger. But the faith itself is changing in caped outright conquestTurkey, Iran and picture even more confusing. Most Saudis subtle ways. Afghanistanat various times had parts of share the West’s anger and despair over vi- Having gone through waves of pro- their territory captured by indels. Saudi olence perpetrated in the name of Islam. gress and retrenchment during its 73 years Arabia is the site of the holiest places in Is- They admit, albeit often grudgingly, that as a unied kingdom, Saudi Arabia is now lam, which carries with it both heavy western protection has helped save them well into another period of rapid change. responsibilities and wide inuence from the failed social experiments that This time, however, the well-oiled compla- among the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims. It is have plagued many other Arab countries, cency of the previous big boom, in the also the only modern state to have been and that western know-how has vastly 1970s, is largely gone. Four years ago, a sur- created by holy war, or jihad: its present improved their lives. Yet Saudis also tend vey in this newspaper argued that it might territory was captured between 1902 and require internal shocks to jolt the Saudis 1925 by a crusading puritan army under into taking reform seriously. Those shocks Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, who declared him- Watch it grow 1 have now arrived. self king in 1932. Population, m Since May 2003, when suicide bom- That same year, American prospectors bers attacked a housing compound in Ri- Saudi nationals Foreigners struck oil in the east of the kingdom.
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