Saturday, November 01, 2003
A RARE PROTEST IN SAUDI ARABIA
Roger Hardy at the BBC has filed a story about witnessing what he believed was a protest against the backward political and economic state of Saudi Arabia. He was kept from seeing the main part of the demonstration, but later he took a ride in a taxi that opened his eyes a little. His driver showed him things foreigners don't normally get to see:
He drove out of the centre of town and showed me the downbeat suburbs where poorer Saudis - many, like him, with large families - live side-by-side with the Filipinos and Pakistanis and Bangladeshis who work in shops and wait at tables and clean the streets. The drab apartment blocks and rubbish-strewn streets were a world away from glitzy, downtown Riyadh.
"You Westerners get it wrong," he told me. "You think what's going on here is all about religion and extremism. But that's a problem that can probably be solved. The real issue - he said - was accountability. If the princes responded to pressures for change by democratising, they would end up losing their power and privileges. And that, he said, was why real reform - radical reform - just was not on the cards.
Ultimately the problem is a terrible synergy between the two things -- Islamic fundamentalism and corrupt, backward political and economic life.
GB, THHotA
posted by Greg 7:39 AM
