The New York Review of Books: ‘I Can’t Believe I’m in Saudi Arabia’

For middle-class urban Saudis the social changes brought in by King Salman and his powerful son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, generally known as MBS, are significant. A movie theater has been built where men and women may sit together—the first film shown was Black Panther, which proved very popular. Women have been permitted to attend sporting events, albeit in single-sex areas, but the most important decree, introduced in 2016, may have been the one curtailing the powers of the mutaween. No longer can the men tasked with “promoting virtue and preventing vice” arrest women on the streets and whip them for failing to cover themselves adequately. Their job must be carried out “in a gentle and humane way.” Robbed of the powers they used to exert with such arbitrary cruelty, they have melted away. [...]

A decade ago, James Mann’s The China Fantasy: How Our Leaders Explain Away Chinese Repression (2007) examined how Western politicians and businesspeople “foster an elaborate set of illusions about China, centered on the belief that commerce will lead inevitably to political change and democracy.” China’s continuing economic expansion coupled with its repression of those who challenge Communist Party rule has provided an object lesson to other governments: it is perfectly possible to allow certain changes that improve your citizens’ lives without letting loose pesky “Western” ideas like civil rights and free elections. In Saudi Arabia, change is designed precisely to curtail political upheaval or a demand for democracy. After the Arab Spring, which saw youth uprisings across the Middle East, King Salman understood that he had to do something for the two thirds of the population who are under thirty. Vision 2030, the ambitious economic and social plan designed by his thirty-three-year-old son, is designed to do just that. [...]

By the logic of a Saudi Arabia rather than a China fantasy, however, there is no contradiction. MBS knows that if the kingdom is to diversify its economy and reduce its dependence on oil, women must become more productive, so they need to drive and not waste their earnings on a driver. He wanted everyone to understand that women were being allowed to drive not because they had campaigned for it, but because their rulers had issued a decree. The point was clear: civil disobedience will not bring results; changes will come only from submission to a benign monarch who will decide what is best. [...]

The war in Yemen has provided many such opportunities for the state to co-opt and neutralize both modernizers and traditionalists. It is not the first time Saudi Arabia has intervened in its impoverished neighbor, but now there is an added sectarian dimension: the Houthis, who seized control of the capital, Sanaa, in early 2015 were to some extent sponsored by Shia Iran, the regional rival to Sunni Saudi Arabia. “This new military interventionism immediately became popular among many Saudi constituences, from Islamists to liberals,” writes Al-Rasheed. “By amplifying the undoubtedly genuine Iranian threat, the Saudi regime invoked both nationalism and sectarianism.”

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