Saudi Arabia Seeks Union Of Monarchies In Region

By KAREEM FAHIM and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK from Manama, Bahrain

Saudi Arabia pushed ahead Monday with efforts to forge a single federation with its five Persian Gulf neighbors as the conservative monarchy seeks to build a new bulwark against the waves of change sweeping the Middle East.

The Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, said after a meeting in Riyadh of the loosely allied, six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council that the group had distributed a draft plan for the union to its members’ foreign ministers to review so they could resolve any issues. “I am hoping that the six countries will unite in the next meeting,” he said.

Several smaller gulf states have publicly balked at the idea, fearing Saudi domination of the group. The fact that no agreement was announced Monday, as some had expected, seemed to signal deep misgivings among several of Saudi Arabia’s neighbors. But Prince Saud’s public push forward despite their opposition underscored the kingdom’s continuing scramble — with diplomacy, money and even arms — to preserve or rebuild what it can of the old regional order in the wake of the Arab uprisings.

Saudi Arabia’s rulers fear that the contagion of popular revolt could reach their country’s borders and stir its own disenfranchised citizens and residents, including dissidents, members of minority groups and foreign workers, analysts said. “They don’t want the spirit of our uprising to reach their shores,” said Sayed Hadi al-Mosawi, a Bahraini opposition politician.

The move also highlights the Saudi monarchy’s preoccupation with its regional rival, Iran, which has been reflected in a series of Saudi interventions that have taken on distinctly sectarian overtones, including its support for Sunni opposition groups in Syria and its military intervention last spring on behalf of the Sunni monarchy in Bahrain.

Thousands of Saudi troops rolled into Bahrain last year to help Bahrain’s monarch put down a popular uprising led by members of the country’s Shiite majority. Bahrain, which is linked by a bridge to Saudi Arabia, is virtually the only country publicly endorsing the Saudi push for a tighter regional federation. In a statement released on Monday, the king of Bahrain, Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, said, “We are looking forward to the establishment of the Gulf Union.”

Several Bahraini opposition activists rejected the idea and suggested it was not only government opponents who feared a closer union with its far more conservative neighbor. “We don’t want to be subsumed by Saudi Arabia,” said Ala’a Shehabi, a writer and opposition activist.

And several other states — including Kuwait, Qatar and Oman, have so far shown little enthusiasm for the kind of tighter union Saudi Arabia is pushing, perhaps modeled on the European Union.

“Each of them has its own reason not to be very warm to the idea of a more empowered Saudi Arabia,” said Emile Hokayem, a Middle East analyst with the International Institute for Strategic Studies who is based in Manama. “Those tensions have been around forever, but what’s different at this point is a number of countries don’t feel they need a Saudi security umbrella. They’re quite ambitious independently. They know how to leverage their wealth. It doesn’t make sense to throw their lot right now in with Saudi Arabia.”

Saudi Arabia has already made moves to try to stretch the Gulf Cooperation Council far beyond its original regional mission to try to turn it into an alliance of monarchies that might band together against the democratic trend. Its diplomats have made overtures to include the kingdoms of Morocco and Jordan.

Saudi and Kuwaiti officials last year even leaked the idea that Egypt might become some kind of member of the group, though Egyptian diplomats quickly dismissed the idea. At the time, one senior Egyptian official suggested that Egypt’s revolution would fundamentally change the nature of the relationship with Saudi Arabia, a longtime ally of the deposed president, Hosni Mubarak.

In recent weeks, Egyptians have taken to the streets to complain about the alliance, prompting the worst crisis in years between the countries. Saudi Arabia withdrew its ambassador after Egyptians, angered at the arrest of an Egyptian human rights lawyer while visiting Saudi Arabia, held protests outside the Saudi Embassy in Cairo. The lawyer, Ahmed el-Gizawy, had drawn attention to the detention of Egyptian workers in Saudi Arabia, who are employed under a restrictive sponsorship system.

But Egypt’s military rulers, fearful of losing billions of dollars in pledged Saudi aid in the midst of a fiscal crisis, quickly tried to heal the rift. Senior Egyptian officials, including senior leaders of the Islamist-led Parliament, flew to Riyadh to make amends with the Saudi king.

Saudi Arabia appears to be trying to make up with Egypt as well. After more than a year of waiting, it has released to Egypt the first $1 billion of a promised aid package, just in time to help Egypt land a larger loan from the International Monetary Fund.

And on Monday, Saudi officials said they were beginning reforms of visa rules that compel guest workers to maintain the “sponsorship” of their Saudi employer — a requirement many Egyptians say reduces guest workers to servitude. Although the planned reforms may be mainly cosmetic — Saudi government “sponsorships” will still be required — the Saudi announcement was played as major news Monday in Egypt’s state media.

-This commentary was published first in The New York Times on 15/05/2012
-Kareem Fahim reported from Manama, and David D. Kirkpatrick from Cairo. Mayy El Sheikh contributed reporting from Cairo