Middle East Turmoil: Is Saudi Arabia Next?
Egypt isn't the only place in the Middle East with dire social and political problems. Saudi Arabia suffers from the same unemployment and inequality. My latest column for CNN asks: how long can these repressive regimes last?
Ten percent unemployment that has persisted for years. Pervasive under-employment for the highly educated. Women largely excluded from the labor force. One out of seven adults who cannot read.
Personal incomes are stagnating; the population is growing fast. Relative to the Western world, the typical person is worse off today than in 1985.
Society is tightly controlled. Everything from the internet to Vogue is subject to censorship. The police have absolute and arbitrary power.
The authorities are unelected, unaccountable, and corruption is alleged on an epic scale.
The gap between rich and poor is enormous and widening.
The head of state is reputed to have gained a personal fortune approaching $20 billion.
The population is restive: In November, the Interior Ministry announced the arrest of 149 suspected al Qaeda terrorists, following a previous roundup of 113 in March. Now guess: Which Middle Eastern country am I describing? Answer: Saudi Arabia.
As you watch the revolutionary scenes in Egypt, consider this possibility: Every factor driving Egypt to revolution is at work in Saudi Arabia, and possibly even more so.
Saudi Arabia of course is wealthier than Egypt.
Half the population of Egypt lives on $2 a day. Saudi Arabia is a land of Pizza Huts and big box stores.
But middle-income countries have revolutions, too. Observers and visitors to the region express concern about Saudi stability.
Imagine yourself a young Saudi man, born about 1985.
Your parents tell you of a golden age of opportunity and improvement that ended just about the time you were born. Now your family lives in a 1970s-vintage apartment building, vastly more comfortable than your grandparents' home. But it's getting crowded for a family with four teenage and young adult sons.
You'd like to marry and get a home of your own. But how? Jobs are scarce, and foreigners are preferred: Employers say they work harder. Such jobs as you could get are beneath your dignity. Saudi universities graduate 6,000 students a year with degrees in education, even as Saudi schools require only 650 new teachers. The Saudi Interior Ministry complained in September that native-born Saudis shun the private sector: More than 6 million foreigners hold private-sector jobs even as 500,000 Saudi job seekers lack work.
So what do you do all day? You can hang out at the mall, try to flirt with the shrouded girls by text message. You can pray at the mosque; that's always allowed. You can read militant Islamist websites on your computer or try to find ways around the anti-pornography firewalls.
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