The true dilemma of West Asia

Other regions in the world often seem just as troubled. But it is West Asia which concerns the world most because it contributes over 20 per cent of world oil supply. According to the International Energy Agency, top 10 countries produced over 63 per cent of the world oil production in 2011. Saudi Arabia is the world’s biggest oil producer with 517 mts or 12.7 per cent. Iran produces 251 mts or 5.7 per cent and the UAE accounts for 149 mts or 3.7 per cent.

Further, since most of this production is mainly in sparsely populated countries, the trade surpluses pile up in western banks as investments and reserves. The seven countries of the oil rich Arabian Peninsula together have a population of just 64 million and a combined GDP of nearly $1.5 trillion. All of them except the poorest one among them, Yemen, have monarchies and support huge expatriate populations. The two other large West Asian oil producers, Iran and Iraq, are bigger countries. Iran, which has a GDP of $357 billion, has a population of 78.8 million; while Iraq, that has a GDP of $144 billion, has a population of 33.6 million.

West Asia also has five of the world’s top 10 proven oil reserves. Saudi Arabia has the world’s fourth largest foreign exchange reserves with $680 billion invested in Western banks. Clearly the world has much riding on the stability of West Asia and in particular the countries of oil rich Arabian Peninsula, Iraq and Iran. The region is awash with huge numbers of small arms and several arms races. The one that causes most concern is Iran and Saudi Arabia’s arms race. Iran is on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons. It already has nuclear capable intermediate range missiles. If and when Iran tests, it is very clear that Saudi Arabia, under the terms it has financed the Pakistani nuclear programme, will “buy” itself a nuclear deterrent.

So the question of how this situation could play out is uppermost in the minds of strategists and forecasters all over the world.
The likely fault-lines are the Shia-Sunni division and tensions, the clamour for democracy or greater people’s participation in government against the more rigid monarchies, and there is always the Palestine issue — an issue that unites the entire Muslim world — getting out of hand with some violent terrorist act sparking off an even more violent Israeli reaction. Would Israel be able to absorb a Mumbai kind of terrorist attack without retaliation on the country from where it emanated? Suppose it came from Jordan or Iran? Would India be able to absorb another major strike by Pakistan-based terrorist groups without retaliation?

Suppose there is another seizure of the Grand Mosque of Mecca, as it happened in 1979. The Grand Mosque Seizure on November 20, 1979, was an armed attack and takeover of the Al-Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the holiest place in Islam, by Islamist dissidents. The siege ended two weeks after the takeover began. Following the attack, the Saudi state implemented stricter enforcement of the Islamic code.

Suppose Saudi Arabia concludes that this attack emanated out of Iran? Saudi Arabia is among the world’s most controlled states. Its internal control makes it almost totalitarian, replete with midnight knocks and disappearances. It also has a profligate and somewhat corrupt royal oligarchy ruling it. How long can it stave off impulses for democracy? In

1979, the violent fallout of this was the torching of the US embassy in Islamabad as Pakistani forces stood by watching. Countries like Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Algeria have full-blown civil wars and/or insurgencies dividing them. These insurgencies are driven by radical Islamic impulses, tribal and sectarian divisions as we saw in Libya and now see in Iraq and Syria. Algeria’s military supported regime battles a radical Islamic movement after it won political power in Algeria’s last free general election. This then is the true dilemma of West Asia. The cry for democracy is often just a Trojan horse for radical Islam. Take Egypt, for instance, where the Islamic Brotherhood had come to power in an election. Or Algeria, where a military coup has to take back government from a radical Islamic party.

Iraq now seems headed for a de facto partition along ethnic and sectarian lines. In the north the Kurds run a virtually autonomous state, while in the Arab parts Shias and Sunnis wage war upon each other. Iran already exercises much influence in Iraq with its Shia majority. In Bahrain the Shia majority’s aspirations for a say in government now lies dormant after a Saudi backed royal crackdown.

Approximately 15 per cent of Saudis are Shia. Within Saudi Arabia the oil producing Eastern Province is a Shia majority area. There have been low-level protests for more than a year in the province’s Qatif region. The province’s Shia majority that has long complained of marginalisation at the hands of the Sunni ruling family. Protests erupted in the region in March 2011 when a popular uprising in neighboring Bahrain, which has a Shia majority and a Sunni royal family, was crushed with the assistance of Saudi and other Gulf troops. Human rights groups say there is systematic discrimination in Saudi Arabia against Shia Muslims in education, employment and justice. Saudi Arabia follows the puritanical form of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism, and many Wahhabi clerics regard Shia Muslims as unbelievers. Clearly the region is very troubled. What will be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back?

First most certainly would be a major terrorist strike against Israel.

Second would be a Shia-Sunni civil war that leads to the partition of Iraq and demands for “democracy” in Saudi Arabia, as we saw in Bahrain last year. If Iraq is partitioned, the oil reserves and production in the West Asian Shia nations will exceed that of the Sunni Arabs. This will almost certainly intensify the Shia struggle for greater freedom in the predominantly Shia Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. This situation is fraught with some more possibilities. Suppose Iran abandons its nuclear program and consequently loses its pariah status in the West? Will it then be freer to pursue its program of greater “democracy” in the Muslim world?
We now wait to see where God directs the Islamist radical next?
(Concluded)

The writer held senior positions in government and industry, and is a policy analyst studying economic and security issues. He also specialises in the Chinese economy.