{"id":29009,"date":"2017-11-26T01:22:01","date_gmt":"2017-11-25T23:22:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/norkhosq.net\/?p=29009"},"modified":"2017-12-24T23:01:01","modified_gmt":"2017-12-24T21:01:01","slug":"opinion-saudi-arabia%e2%80%99s-arab-spring-at-last","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/norkhosq.net\/?p=29009","title":{"rendered":"Opinion| Saudi Arabia\u2019s Arab Spring, at Last"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"\"\" <\/strong><\/p>\n

The crown prince has big plans for his society. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Thomas L. Friedman<\/p>\n

November 23, 2017<\/p>\n

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia \u2014 I never thought I\u2019d live long enough to write this sentence: The most significant reform process underway anywhere in the Middle East today is in Saudi Arabia. Yes, you read that right. Though I came here at the start of Saudi winter, I found the country going through its own Arab Spring, Saudi style.<\/p>\n

Unlike the other Arab Springs \u2014 all of which emerged bottom up and failed miserably, except in Tunisia \u2014 this one is led from the top down by the country\u2019s 32-year-old crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, and, if it succeeds, it will not only change the character of Saudi Arabia but the tone and tenor of Islam across the globe. Only a fool would predict its success \u2014 but only a fool would not root for it.<\/p>\n

To better understand it I flew to Riyadh to interview the crown prince, known as \u201cM.B.S.,\u201d who had not spoken about the extraordinary events here of early November, when his government arrested scores of Saudi princes and businessmen on charges of corruption and threw them into a makeshift gilded jail \u2014 the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton \u2014 until they agreed to surrender their ill-gotten gains. You don\u2019t see that every day.<\/p>\n

We met at night at his family\u2019s ornate adobe-walled palace in Ouja, north of Riyadh. M.B.S. spoke in English, while his brother, Prince Khalid, the new Saudi ambassador to the U.S., and several senior ministers shared different lamb dishes and spiced the conversation. After nearly four hours together, I surrendered at 1:15 a.m. to M.B.S.\u2019s youth, pointing out that I was exactly twice his age. It\u2019s been a long, long time, though, since any Arab leader wore me out with a fire hose of new ideas about transforming his country.<\/p>\n

We started with the obvious question: What\u2019s happening at the Ritz? And was this his power play to eliminate his family and private sector rivals before his ailing father, King Salman, turns the keys of the kingdom over to him?<\/p>\n

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The Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Riyadh. Faisal Al Nasser \/ Reuters<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

It\u2019s \u201cludicrous,\u201d he said, to suggest that this anticorruption campaign was a power grab. He pointed out that many prominent members of the Ritz crowd had already publicly pledged allegiance to him and his reforms, and that \u201ca majority of the royal family\u201d is already behind him. This is what happened, he said: \u201cOur country has suffered a lot from corruption from the 1980s until today. The calculation of our experts is that roughly 10 percent of all government spending was siphoned off by corruption each year, from the top levels to the bottom. Over the years the government launched more than one \u2018war on corruption\u2019 and they all failed. Why? Because they all started from the bottom up.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

So when his father, who has never been tainted by corruption charges during his nearly five decades as governor of Riyadh, ascended to the throne in 2015 (at a time of falling oil prices), he vowed to put a stop to it all, M.B.S. said:<\/p>\n

\u201cMy father saw that there is no way we can stay in the G-20 and grow with this level of corruption. In early 2015, one of his first orders to his team was to collect all the information about corruption \u2014 at the top. This team worked for two years until they collected the most accurate information, and then they came up with about 200 names.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"\"King Salman praying at Quba mosque in Medina, Saudi Arabia, this month. Reuters<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

When all the data was ready, the public prosecutor, Saud al-Mojib, took action, M.B.S. said, explaining that each suspected billionaire or prince was arrested and given two choices: \u201cWe show them all the files that we have and as soon as they see those about 95 percent agree to a settlement,\u201d which means signing over cash or shares of their business to the Saudi state treasury.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbout 1 percent,\u201d he added, \u201care able to prove they are clean and their case is dropped right there. About 4 percent say they are not corrupt and with their lawyers want to go to court. Under Saudi law, the public prosecutor is independent. We cannot interfere with his job \u2014 the king can dismiss him, but he is driving the process \u2026 We have experts making sure no businesses are bankrupted in the process\u201d \u2014 to avoid causing unemployment.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow much money are they recovering?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

The public prosecutor says it could eventually \u201cbe around $100 billion in settlements,\u201d said M.B.S.<\/p>\n

There is no way, he added, to root out all corruption from top to the bottom, \u201cSo you have to send a signal, and the signal going forward now is, \u2018You will not escape.\u2019 And we are already seeing the impact,\u201d like people writing on social media, \u201cI called my middle man and he doesn\u2019t answer.\u201d Saudi business people who paid bribes to get services done by bureaucrats are not being prosecuted, explained M.B.S. \u201cIt\u2019s those who shook the money out of the government\u201d \u2014 by overcharging and getting kickbacks.<\/p>\n

The stakes are high for M.B.S. in this anticorruption drive. If the public feels that he is truly purging corruption that was sapping the system and doing so in a way that is transparent and makes clear to future Saudi and foreign investors that the rule of law will prevail, it will really instill a lot of new confidence in the system. But if the process ends up feeling arbitrary, bullying and opaque, aimed more at aggregating power for power\u2019s sake and unchecked by any rule of law, it will end up instilling fear that will unnerve Saudi and foreign investors in ways the country can\u2019t afford.<\/p>\n

But one thing I know for sure: Not a single Saudi I spoke to here over three days expressed anything other than effusive support for this anticorruption drive. The Saudi silent majority is clearly fed up with the injustice of so many princes and billionaires ripping off their country. While foreigners, like me, were inquiring about the legal framework for this operation, the mood among Saudis I spoke with was: \u201cJust turn them all upside down, shake the money out of their pockets and don\u2019t stop shaking them until it\u2019s all out!\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"\"Men entering Alrajhi Mosque for noon prayer last month. Tasneem Alsultan for The New York Times<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

But guess what? This anticorruption drive is only the second-most unusual and important initiative launched by M.B.S. The first is to bring Saudi Islam back to its more open and modern orientation \u2014 whence it diverted in 1979. That is, back to what M.B.S. described to a recent global investment conference here as a \u201cmoderate, balanced Islam that is open to the world and to all religions and all traditions and peoples.\u201d<\/p>\n

I know that year well. I started my career as a reporter in the Middle East in Beirut in 1979, and so much of the region that I have covered since was shaped by the three big events of that year: the takeover of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by Saudi puritanical extremists \u2014 who denounced the Saudi ruling family as corrupt, impious sellouts to Western values; the Iranian Islamic revolution; and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

These three events together freaked out the Saudi ruling family at the time, and prompted it to try to shore up its legitimacy by allowing its Wahhabi clerics to impose a much more austere Islam on the society and by launching a worldwide competition with Iran\u2019s ayatollahs over who could export more fundamentalist Islam. It didn\u2019t help that the U.S. tried to leverage this trend by using Islamist fighters against Russia in Afghanistan. In all, it pushed Islam globally way to the right and helped nurture 9\/11.<\/p>\n

A lawyer by training, who rose up in his family\u2019s education-social welfare foundation, M.B.S. is on a mission to bring Saudi Islam back to the center. He has not only curbed the authority of the once feared Saudi religious police to berate a woman for not covering every inch of her skin, he has also let women drive. And unlike any Saudi leader before him, he has taken the hard-liners on ideologically. As one U.S.-educated 28-year-old Saudi woman told me: M.B.S. \u201cuses a different language. He says, \u2018We are going to destroy extremism.\u2019 He\u2019s not sugar-coating. That is reassuring to me that the change is real.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, M.B.S. instructed me: \u201cDo not write that we are \u2018reinterpreting\u2019 Islam \u2014 we are \u2018restoring\u2019 Islam to its origins \u2014 and our biggest tools are the Prophet\u2019s practices and [daily life in] Saudi Arabia before 1979.\u201d At the time of the Prophet Muhammad, he argued, there were musical theaters, there was mixing between men and women, there was respect for Christians and Jews in Arabia. \u201cThe first commercial judge in Medina was a woman!\u201d So if the Prophet embraced all of this, M.B.S. asked, \u201cDo you mean the Prophet was not a Muslim?\u201d<\/p>\n

Then one of his ministers got out his cellphone and shared with me pictures and YouTube videos of Saudi Arabia in the 1950s \u2014 women without heads covered, wearing skirts and walking with men in public, as well as concerts and cinemas. It was still a traditional and modest place, but not one where fun had been outlawed, which is what happened after 1979.<\/p>\n

If this virus of an antipluralistic, misogynistic Islam that came out of Saudi Arabia in 1979 can be reversed by Saudi Arabia, it would drive moderation across the Muslim world and surely be welcomed here where 65 percent of the population is under 30.<\/p>\n

One middle-age Saudi banker said to me: \u201cMy generation was held hostage by 1979. I know now that my kids will not be hostages.\u201d Added a 28-year-old Saudi woman social entrepreneur: \u201cTen years ago when we talked about music in Riyadh it meant buying a CD \u2014 now it is about the concert next month and what ticket are you buying and which of your friends will go with you.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Participants at the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh, in October.<\/span><\/div>\n
Tasneem Alsultan for The New York Times<\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/div>\n

Saudi Arabia would have a very long way to go before it approached anything like Western standards for free speech and women\u2019s rights. But as someone who has been coming here for almost 30 years, it blew my mind to learn that you can hear Western classical music concerts in Riyadh now, that country singer Toby Keith held a men-only concert here in September, where he even sang with a Saudi, and that Lebanese soprano Hiba Tawaji will be among the first woman singers to perform a women-only concert here on Dec. 6. And M.B.S told me, it was just decided that women will be able to go to stadiums and attend soccer games. The Saudi clerics have completely acquiesced.<\/p>\n

The Saudi education minister chimed in that among a broad set of education reforms, he\u2019s redoing and digitizing all textbooks, sending 1,700 Saudi teachers each year to world-class schools in places like Finland to upgrade their skills, announcing that for the first time Saudi girls will have physical education classes in public schools and this year adding an hour to the Saudi school day for kids to explore their passions in science and social issues, under a teacher\u2019s supervision, with their own projects.<\/p>\n

So many of these reforms were so long overdue it\u2019s ridiculous. Better late than never, though.<\/p>\n

On foreign policy, M.B.S. would not discuss the strange goings on with Prime Minister Saad Hariri of Lebanon coming to Saudi Arabia and announcing his resignation, seemingly under Saudi pressure, and now returning to Beirut and rescinding that resignation. He simply insisted that the bottom line of the whole affair is that Hariri, a Sunni Muslim, is not going to continue providing political cover for a Lebanese government that is essentially controlled by the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah militia, which is essentially controlled by Tehran.<\/p>\n

He insisted that the Saudi-backed war in Yemen, which has been a humanitarian nightmare, was tilting in the direction of the pro-Saudi legitimate government there, which, he said is now in control of 85 percent of the country, but given the fact that pro-Iranian Houthi rebels, who hold the rest, launched a missile at Riyadh airport, anything less than 100 percent is still problematic.<\/p>\n

His general view seemed to be that with the backing of the Trump administration \u2014 he praised President Trump as \u201cthe right person at the right time\u201d \u2014 the Saudis and their Arab allies were slowly building a coalition to stand up to Iran. I am skeptical. The dysfunction and rivalries within the Sunni Arab world generally have prevented forming a unified front up to now, which is why Iran indirectly controls four Arab capitals today \u2014 Damascus, Sana, Baghdad and Beirut. That Iranian over-reach is one reason M.B.S. was scathing about Iran\u2019s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s \u201csupreme leader is the new Hitler of the Middle East,\u201d said M.B.S. \u201cBut we learned from Europe that appeasement doesn\u2019t work. We don\u2019t want the new Hitler in Iran to repeat what happened in Europe in the Middle East.\u201d What matters most, though, is what Saudi Arabia does at home to build its strength and economy.<\/p>\n

But can M.B.S. and his team see this through? Again, I make no predictions. He has his flaws that he will have to control, insiders here tell me. They include relying on a very tight circle of advisers who don\u2019t always challenge him sufficiently, and a tendency to start too many things that don\u2019t get finished. There\u2019s a whole list. But guess what? Perfect is not on the menu here. Someone had to do this job \u2014 wrench Saudi Arabia into the 21st century \u2014 and M.B.S. stepped up. I, for one, am rooting for him to succeed in his reform efforts.<\/p>\n

And so are a lot of young Saudis. There was something a 30-year-old Saudi woman social entrepreneur said to me that stuck in my ear. \u201cWe are privileged to be the generation that has seen the before and the after.\u201d The previous generation of Saudi women, she explained, could never imagine a day when a woman could drive and the coming generation will never be able to imagine a day when a woman couldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I will always remember not being able to drive,\u201d she told me. And the fact that starting in June that will never again be so \u201cgives me so much hope. It proves to me that anything is possible \u2014 that this is a time of opportunity. We have seen things change and we are young enough to make the transition.\u201d<\/p>\n

This reform push is giving the youth here a new pride in their country, almost a new identity, which many of them clearly relish. Being a Saudi student in post-9\/11 America, young Saudis confess, is to always feel you are being looked at as a potential terrorist or someone who comes from a country locked in the Stone Age.<\/p>\n

Now they have a young leader who is driving religious and economic reform, who talks the language of high tech, and whose biggest sin may be that he wants to go too fast. Most ministers are now in their 40s \u2014 and not 60s. And with the suffocating hand of a puritanical Islam being lifted, it\u2019s giving them a chance to think afresh about their country and their identity as Saudis.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to restore our culture to what it was before the [Islamic] radical culture took over,\u201d a Saudi woman friend who works with an N.G.O. said to me. \u201d`We have 13 regions in this country, and they each have a different cuisine. But nobody knows that. Did you know that? But I never saw one Saudi dish go global. It is time for us to embrace who we are and who we were.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia.<\/span><\/div>\n
Fayez Nureldine \/ Agence France-Presse \u2014 Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n

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Alas, who Saudi Arabia is also includes a large cohort of older, more rural, more traditional Saudis, and pulling them into the 21st century will be a challenge. But that\u2019s in part why every senior bureaucrat is working crazy hours now. They know M.B.S. can call them on the phone at any of those hours to find out if something he wanted done is getting done. I told him his work habits reminded me of a line in the play \u201cHamilton,\u201d when the chorus asks: Why does he always work like \u201che\u2019s running out of time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause,\u201d said M.B.S., „I fear that the day I die I am going to die without accomplishing what I have in my mind. Life is too short and a lot of things can happen, and I am really keen to see it with my own eyes \u2014 and that is why I am in a hurry.\u201d<\/p>\n

https:\/\/mobile.nytimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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