The Arabian Peninsula

The desert peninsula of Arabia has few natural attributes to encourage human settlement, and today large areas remain virtually uninhabited (see Figure 6.21). The land is persistently dry and has large areas that are barren of vegetation. Streams flow only after sporadic rainstorms that may not come again for years. The peninsula’s one significant resource—oil—amounts to about 40 percent of the world’s proven reserves. Saudi Arabia has by far the largest portion, with approximately 20 percent of the world’s reserves.

Traditionally, control of the land was divided among several ancestral tribal groups led by patriarchal leaders called sheikhs. The sheikhs were based in desert oasis towns and in the uplands and mountains bordering the Red Sea. The tribespeople they ruled were either nomadic herders who followed a seasonal migration path over wide areas in search of pasture and water for their flocks, or poor farmers who settled where rainfall or groundwater supported crops. Until the twentieth century, the sheikhs and those they governed earned additional income by trading with camel caravans that crossed the desert (once the main mode of transportation) and by providing lodging and sustenance to those on religious pilgrimages to Makkah.

sheikhs traditionally, patriarchal leaders who controlled the use of lands shared among several ancestral tribal groups

Wealth in Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia, at the heart of this region culturally because it is the home of Makkah and other Islamic holy sites, is politically and economically central as well. Saudi Arabia’s leaders, with their stranglehold on the country’s vast oil wealth, have sought flashy symbols of modernity (Figure 6.34) but have managed to resist the political changes sweeping through much of this region. However, many other powerful changes are afoot.

FIGURE 6.34 The Arabian Peninsula subregion. (A) Al-Faisaliah Tower in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, is named after King Faisal (1903–1975) and is the second-tallest building in the kingdom. It is designed to resemble a ballpoint pen. Inside the golden ball at the top is a revolving restaurant that offers views of the city. Courtesy Michel de Nijs/E+/Getty Images

In the twentieth century, the sheikhs of the Saud family, in cooperation with conservative religious leaders of the Wahhabi sect, consolidated the tribal groups to form an absolutist monarchy called Saudi Arabia, which occupies the central part of the peninsula. The Saud family consolidated its power just as reserves of oil and gas were becoming exportable resources for Arabia. The resulting wealth has added greatly to the power and prestige of the Saud family and of their allies, the Wahhabi clerics. Their tight control over Saudi Arabia has inhibited the development of opportunities for young people, despite the considerable material wealth from petroleum resources.

Discontent, especially among young Saudi adults, is rising. Sometimes people express this discontent by embracing fundamentalist Islam. A majority of the suicide hijackers involved in the 9/11 attacks in the United States were Saudi, as was the founder of the Al Qaeda movement, Osama bin Laden, a member of a Saudi family that became rich in the construction business. Analysts familiar with Saudi Arabia suggest that Islamist violence has an appeal because there is no civil forum for airing discontent. The regional press speculates that political power is bound to shift away from the Saud family and others like it as education rates increase and young people find ways to use the Internet as an outlet for political expression, as has already begun to happen in Riyadh and Yemen.

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Despite the overall conservatism of Arabian society, oil money has changed landscapes, populations, material culture, and social relationships across the peninsula. Where there were once mud-brick towns and camel herds, there are now large, modern cities served by airports and taxis. The population of the peninsula has burgeoned to 55 million people, half of whom live in Saudi Arabia. Irrigated agriculture has made the peninsula nearly self-sufficient in food, though only in the short term, since the irrigation is unsustainable. Even with all this apparent progress, women are still strictly limited in political power; and the great majority of peninsula citizens have yet to be included in economic and social development.

The six smaller nations on the perimeter of the Arabian Peninsula, now ruled by ancestral clans that resisted the Saudi family expansion in the 1930s, have varying profiles. Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, each with close to 10 percent of the world’s oil reserves, are rapidly modernizing and are extremely affluent. Bahrain and Dubai generate income not so much from oil as from services related to oil production and transport, and by providing entertainment, shopping, and manufactured goods for neighboring wealthy Saudis. In Dubai, where daytime temperatures average 110°F, a shopping mall features a frigid indoor ski slope where skiers can rent skis and winter clothing (Figure 6.35).

FIGURE 6.35 Ski Dubai in the Mall of the Emirates. Malls in Dubai are noted for their opulence. In a specially insulated section of this mall, visitors can ski on 6000 tons of artificially made snow down a 400-meter run. Even though the temperature outside may be well above 110°F, visitors must wear winter clothing to stay warm inside the facility. Courtesy Celia Peterson/arabianEye/Getty Images

Troubles in Yemen

Yemen occupies an important juncture in the world’s shipping lanes, at the southern end of the Red Sea on the Gulf of Aden. The country is about one-fourth as large as Saudi Arabia, its neighbor to the north, but the two countries have nearly the same size population (22 million compared with Saudi Arabia’s 28 million). Yemen is not well endowed with oil but it does depend on oil exports. Production, however, has already passed its peak and oil revenues are bound to drop. Yemen’s standards of education and of living remain by far the lowest on the peninsula and women’s rights are meager.

The Arab Spring brought political change to Yemen in 2012, when a new government was elected, ending a 33-year regime notorious for corruption and authoritarianism. However, the new government remains unstable as it battles the many remnants of the previous administration and struggles to assert its control across the country. In the northwest of Yemen, a rebellious province occupied by the Houthi, a Shi’ite ethnic group reputedly funded and armed by Iran, is keeping both Yemeni and Saudi forces engaged. In the south, disgruntled sheikhs are defecting from the government, apparently because the patronage system is failing them. Meanwhile, Yemen has attracted several extremist groups who are looking for a safe haven. Most notable among these is Al Qaeda, which periodically trains new recruits in Yemen’s uncharted territory that borders the Saudi Arabian desert. Hundreds of young men have fled the failed state of nearby Somalia and have come to Yemen to seek some type of work; the $100 or so that Al Qaeda offers has been enough to buy their loyalty. The international community views the situation in Yemen as dangerous, enough so that it periodically makes efforts to strengthen the Yemen government with foreign aid, though it remains unclear what effect the aid is having.

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ON THE BRIGHT SIDE

Changes in the Work Ethic in the Gulf States

The actual day-to-day work necessary to keep the Arabian Peninsula societies running has been performed by contract laborers from India and Southeast Asia at wages that average U.S.$1 an hour. Scientific and engineering expertise has been supplied from Europe and the Americas at much higher rates of compensation. Workers and expertise have been imported because there has been a shortage of talent in the Gulf states. The causes are multiple: Women tend to not work outside the home even though they may be educated; young men have been discouraged from doing manual labor because of the low status of such work, and they have not been motivated to undertake the long study programs necessary to gain professional degrees; institutions of higher learning have not been available within the region until recently; and the motivation to undertake demanding jobs day after day has been squelched by the substantial stipends paid to most citizens from oil revenue.

Times are now changing. When leaders observed that the ideas generated by the Arab Spring in North Africa were spreading to Gulf youth, and that feminist movements were beginning to sprout, they concluded that the youthful idleness was not healthy. Furthermore, when censuses showed that 42 percent of Gulf state populations were expatriate laborers from India and Southeast Asia who were increasingly dissatisfied with their jobs, it was clear that it was time to reorder society. Education, job training for local youth, and the reform of social attitudes toward work are now being emphasized. The dignity and psychic rewards of work are stressed, and former rules against the two genders working together are being relaxed. The goals are to instill pride in personal self-sufficiency and in on-the-job accomplishments and to lessen dependence on workers from outside the region.

THINGS TO REMEMBER

  • Despite the conservatism of Arabian society in this subregion, oil money has changed landscapes, populations, material culture, and social relationships across the peninsula; and as the number of educated women and men increases, further changes are on the horizon.
  • Yemen is a poor and politically unstable state in this subregion, with internal conflicts in two areas and a significant presence of Al Qaeda.