On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines - and Future
- ISBN-10
- 0307960994
- ISBN-13
- 9780307960993
- Category
- History
- Pages
- 320
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2012-09-18
- Publisher
- Vintage
- Author
- Karen Elliott House
Description
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter who has spent the last thirty years writing about Saudi Arabia—as diplomatic correspondent, foreign editor, and then publisher of The Wall Street Journal—an important and timely book that explores all facets of life in this shrouded Kingdom: its tribal past, its complicated present, its precarious future. Through observation, anecdote, extensive interviews, and analysis Karen Elliot House navigates the maze in which Saudi citizens find themselves trapped and reveals the mysterious nation that is the world’s largest exporter of oil, critical to global stability, and a source of Islamic terrorists. In her probing and sharp-eyed portrait, we see Saudi Arabia, one of the last absolute monarchies in the world, considered to be the final bulwark against revolution in the region, as threatened by multiple fissures and forces, its levers of power controlled by a handful of elderly Al Saud princes with an average age of 77 years and an extended family of some 7,000 princes. Yet at least 60 percent of the increasingly restive population they rule is under the age of 20. The author writes that oil-rich Saudi Arabia has become a rundown welfare state. The public pays no taxes; gets free education and health care; and receives subsidized water, electricity, and energy (a gallon of gasoline is cheaper in the Kingdom than a bottle of water), with its petrodollars buying less and less loyalty. House makes clear that the royal family also uses Islam’s requirement of obedience to Allah—and by extension to earthly rulers—to perpetuate Al Saud rule. Behind the Saudi facade of order and obedience, today’s Saudi youth, frustrated by social conformity, are reaching out to one another and to a wider world beyond their cloistered country. Some 50 percent of Saudi youth is on the Internet; 5.1 million Saudis are on Facebook. To write this book, the author interviewed most of the key members of the very private royal family. She writes about King Abdullah’s modest efforts to relax some of the kingdom’s most oppressive social restrictions; women are now allowed to acquire photo ID cards, finally giving them an identity independent from their male guardians, and are newly able to register their own businesses but are still forbidden to drive and are barred from most jobs. With extraordinary access to Saudis—from key religious leaders and dissident imams to women at university and impoverished widows, from government officials and political dissidents to young successful Saudis and those who chose the path of terrorism—House argues that most Saudis do not want democracy but seek change nevertheless; they want a government that provides basic services without subjecting citizens to the indignity of begging princes for handouts; a government less corrupt and more transparent in how it spends hundreds of billions of annual oil revenue; a kingdom ruled by law, not royal whim. In House’s assessment of Saudi Arabia’s future, she compares the country today to the Soviet Union before Mikhail Gorbachev arrived with reform policies that proved too little too late after decades of stagnation under one aged and infirm Soviet leader after another. She discusses what the next generation of royal princes might bring and the choices the kingdom faces: continued economic and social stultification with growing risk of instability, or an opening of society to individual initiative and enterprise with the risk that this, too, undermines the Al Saud hold on power. A riveting book—informed, authoritative, illuminating—about a country that could well be on the brink, and an in-depth examination of what all this portends for Saudi Arabia’s future, and for our own.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2013
- 308 pages
- Paperback
- Vintage
Similar books
-
Saudi Arabia on the Edge: The Uncertain Future of an American Ally
By Thomas W. Lippman15 Matthew Simmons, Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy (Hoboken, ... 2008, http://www.aspo-usa.com/ archives/ index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=333&Itemid=93 18 Private e-mail message.
-
A History of Saudi Arabia
By Madawi Al-RasheedThis new edition covers the political, economic and social developments in Saudi Arabia since 9/11 to the present day.
-
Saudi Arabia: A Kingdom in Peril
By Paul Aarts, Carolien RoelantsSaudi Arabia is the only oil exporter capable of acting as a 'swing producer', a fact of which this book reminds us.
-
Vision or Mirage: Saudi Arabia at the Crossroads
By David RundellThe book is based on the author's close contacts and intimate knowledge of the country where he spent 15 years living and working as a diplomat.
-
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
By David E. Long"This is the outstanding book on Saudi Arabia for readers desiring a comprehensive view of the subject embracing both background and contemporary foreign policy issues.
-
Saudi Arabia and Iran: Power and Rivalry in the Middle East
By Simon MabonWith analysis of this heated and often uneasy relationship and its impact on the wider Middle East, this book is vital for those researching international relations and diplomacy in the region.
-
Modern Saudi Arabia
By Valerie AnishchenkovaThis volume will be useful for readers looking for specific topical information and for those who want to read entire chapters to gain a deeper perspective on aspects of modern Saudi Arabia.
-
Succession In Saudi Arabia
By J. KechichianThe stability of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia remains critical to Western security and economic interests.
-
Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia
By Robert LaceyIn this immensely important book, journalist Robert Lacey draws on years of access to every circle of Saudi society giving readers the fullest portrait yet of a land straddling the worlds of medievalism and modernity.
-
Archive Wars: The Politics of History in Saudi Arabia
By Rosie BsheerWith this book, Rosie Bsheer explores the increasing secularization of the postwar Saudi state and how it manifested in assembling a national archive and reordering urban space in Riyadh and Mecca.