As discussed in last week’s post, a number of very interesting sessions at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week had to do with the Middle East and taking my own advice, I tried to watch as many as I could. The WEF, kindly provides videos of many of the different sessions and you can watch them by clicking on the session from the agenda, here.
The most hopeful speech that I saw was Tom Friedman’s interview with Shimon Peres, Israel’s 9th president who is 91. Peres painted a vision of a technologically advanced region where global companies engaged directly with a tolerant and open minded younger generation and where terror is defeated by increasing wealth, opportunity and re-establishing values across the world’s major religions.
The new Prime Minister of Iraq and the President of Egypt, made separate speeches that were well written and told the audience exactly what they wanted to hear. Both countries will support democracy, reform their institutions, fight terror and support the international community. Both asked for international support, Iraq to fight against the Islamic State and Egypt to build up its private sector and build out the country’s infrastructure.
Iraq’s Haïder Abadi even said that his government was working with Sunni tribes to defeat the Islamic State. Egypt’s President, Abdelfattah Said Hussein Alsisi, put himself and his country firmly against the international terrorist threat and insisted several times that his government was the expression of the will of the Egyptian people who rejected the former government that he overthrew.
The most realistic speaker in my view was Barham Salih, Prime Minister of Iraqi Kurdistan, who pointed out in a different session that his region was working effectively and had managed to halt the advance of the Islamic State. If I heard it correctly he made a not so subtle claim to the city of Kirkuk in exchange for staying in Iraq.
The death of Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud
All of these and other session were overshadowed by the death of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah and the appointment of his half brother Salman as the new King. Salman is now the 6th of Ibn Saud’s 45 sons to occupy the throne and while the youngest Prince, Murquin, was named as Crown Prince, many analysts placed great significance on one of the many nephews being named Deputy Crown Prince or second in line for the throne.
The issue for Salman, who is rumored to be ill, is that the region is in a critical state. At the moment there is a civil war in Syria, The Islamic State has occupied a significant slice of that country as well as Iraq, the government of Yemen has fallen to the Houthi rebels. The back drop to the current situation are record low oil process supported by the Saudis causing significant budgetary impact across the region and many countries experiencing acute shortages of water.
On top of this elections will be held in Israel on March 17th and the election appears to hinge on security and whether to embrace a two state solution with the Palestinians.
Back to the past?
King Abdullah is largely credited with stopping the Arab Spring and the Saudi government has placed stability before all else in the last few years. As far as I can tell, lower government revenues combined with a growing population of underemployed young men will only fuel the growing tensions between Shia and Sunni across the region.
Shimon Peres offered a hopeful view of the future but also said that terror is more of a threat to the Arab states than Israel will ever be. If by terrorism he means Jihad as given to us by the Islamic State or its analogous Shia versions, I suspect he is right.
I only hope he is not prophetic.