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Introduction
The political and socio-economic emergence of the Arabian Gulf
The present-day Arabian Gulf states of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) share a common history, geography, social structure, culture and language. The peoples of the region were among the first to embrace Islam, and this religion continues to play a major role in shaping the practices and evolution of Gulf societies. In addition, the region is subject to similar environmental conditions of little rain and extreme summer heat. This has meant that, with the exception of parts of Oman, most of the Arabian Gulf region does not have a history of pre-capitalist settled agricultural production. Instead, many of the Gulf peoples were semi-nomadic herders, pearl divers and traders organized around different tribal groups. In addition, small trading centers on the Gulf and Indian Ocean played an important role in organizing pre-modern oceanic trade between Persia, South Asia, East Africa and the Arab world. Finally, the annual Haj pilgrimage meant that a relatively large number of religious pilgrims regularly passed through the region. Despite this openness to trade and the movements of people, unfavorable climatic conditions meant that this region remained very poor and lacked much of the physical and social infrastructure that could promote development.
The poverty of the Arabian Gulf territories was further exacerbated by the period of European imperial domination. With the important exceptions of what is now Saudi Arabia and Oman, representatives of the British Empire forged a series of treaties with the ancestors of the contemporary ruling families of the region. In return for the acceptance of British hegemony in the Gulf, the British rulers recognized the authority of these tribal leaders. The result was the increased political and economic isolation of the Arabian Gulf region. For much of British imperial rule, the present-day Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states or âtrucial statesâ were overseen by the colonial government of India.
The advent of oil production, the rise of Arab nationalism and the decline of British influence have led to profound economic, social and political transformations in the last 65 years. Living standards improved at an unprecedented rate, as revenues from oil exports funded the construction and maintenance of an impressively modern physical infrastructure. This led to the importation of vast numbers of skilled and unskilled expatriate labor from the rest of the Arab world, Asia and, to a lesser extent, Europe and North America. In addition, all of the Arabian Gulf states attained independence and established a unique form of absolutist monarchical governments that maintained their power and popular legitimacy through aggressive development programs and the distribution of oil rents to their tribal/national constituencies.
The GCC region is the wealthiest region in the Arab world and enjoys some of the highest per capita GDPs worldwide. Its wealth is tied to its oil and gas natural resources, although some regions such as the Emirate of Dubai have succeeded in diversifying their economy as their oil resources started to dwindle. Although oil exploration and exploitation began in the early twentieth century, most of the benefits went to British and American oil companies. It was not until the 1970s that the Gulf states began to reap the benefits from their oil wealth, which by the early 1990s became under total state control (Metz, 1993). Today, the economies of the six member states of the GCC are heavily reliant on the hydrocarbons industry. Oil and gas exports account for a large proportion of total exports in all of the GCC states and play an even more crucial role in financing government activity (see Table 1.1).1
The nations of the Arabian Gulf that evolved from this process are not identical. A key factor differentiating the countries from each other is their degree of wealth. Qatar, Kuwait and the UAE (especially the Emirate of Abu Dhabi) have very high per capita incomes, while Bahrain and Oman are poorer. Because of these important economic differences, Bahrain and Oman are somewhat less dependent on expatriate labor and have relatively more nationals working in less remunerative jobs in the private sector (see Table 1.2).
Table 1.1 Economic indicators of the GCC (2010)
| Country | GDP per capita (PPP, US dollars) | Export revenue of oil and gas as % of total export revenue | Revenue from oil and gas exports as % of total government revenue |
|
| Bahrain | 23,101 | 72.3 | 69.0 |
| Kuwait | 41,240 | 81.7 | 86.2 |
| Oman | 22,390 | 86.1 | 65.6 |
| Qatar | 136,248 | 64.7 | 74.8 |
| Saudi Arabia | 20,189 | 81.8 | 83.1 |
| United Arab Emirates | 60,175 | 80.6 | 30.5 |
Until the early 1980s, Arabs outside the Arabian Peninsula held a stereotypical view of Gulf Arabs as nomads living a life of camel herding and pearl diving in tribal sheikhdoms under harsh desert conditions. The centers of the Arab world were cities such as Algiers, Baghdad, Beirut, Damascus, Cairo, Casablanca or Tunis that stood for the image of modernity in the Arab world. Oil wealth in the Gulf region changed all that. Today, cities such as Dubai or Doha represent the image of what Arabs could achieve if they could only get their house in order. Dubai holds world records for the tallest buildings, largest
Table 1.2 GCC demographic composition
| Country | Total population | Nationals | Non-national | % of population under 25* |
|
| Saudi Arabia (2013) | 29,994,272 | 20,271,058 (68%) | 9,723,214 (32%) | 51 |
| UAE (2010 estimate) | 8,264,070 | 947,997 (17%) | 7,316,073 (83%) | 31 |
| Kuwait (2012 estimate) | 3,268,431 | 1,128,381 (34%) | 2,140,050 (65%) | 38 |
| Oman (2010) | 2,803,000 | 1,785,304 (64%) | 1,128,381 (36%) | 52 |
| Qatar (2014) | 2,269,672 | 278,000 (12%) | 1,828,983 (88%) | 34 |
| Bahrain (Census 2010) | 1,234,571 | 568,399 (46%) | 666,172 (54%) | 44 |
firework displays, biggest screen and busiest airport in the world. It has won the right to host the World Expo in 2020 and Doha, Qatar will host the World Cup in 2022. The UAE, Qatar and Kuwait, are at the forefront of providing financial help to their poorer, less fortunate âArab brothersâ and in so doing yielding tremendous influence on the politically aware Arab scene, despite their relatively small populations.
The tribal groupings have become modern nations and their cities are âworld hubs for transnational flows of people, goods, and capital.â The new political entities of the Gulf are âeach carved out of shared tribal territory and identical historiesâ (Cooke, 2014: 5) that are gradually being differentiated by the adoption of national symbols taken from the common past (an oryx, a pearl, a coffee pot, a dhow or an incense burner, or a falcon). In embracing modernity and globalization, the GCC states attempt to maintain their tribal heritage as part of their modern identity. The need to highlight their past signals their uniqueness and serves to assert their prestigious standing in societies where they have become minorities. As Cooke puts it, the return to tribal identity:
signals racial privilege, social status, and exclusive entitlement to a share in national profits. Indeed, the rubbing up of the tribal against the modern in todayâs Gulf states does not represent a clash of conflicting values, but, rather, the desired effect of common aspirations.
(Cooke, 2014: 10)
There are many ways that this return is accomplished through preserving the national dress for both women and men in public spaces, national museums and heritage villages, traditional sports, national celebrations with appeal to tribal ceremonies and symbols, to promoting local dialects. An iconic representation of this combination of the tribal and the modern is best captured in womenâs dress. Young Gulf women wearing the latest Western designer fashions being revealed under the âSheelaâ (long, black, cape-like traditional dress) with the latest makeup, and luxury brand accessories. While some have interpreted these combinations in dichotomies as engendering some sort of âcognitive dissonanceâ young women see their behaviors as a marriage of the two worlds they are part of. A Saudi writer aptly captures this convergence when she says âwhere the old world and the new are tight as two loversâ (Alim, 2007: 217, as cited in Cooke, 2014).
The birth of the GCC and the contemporary challenges facing the region
The Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf, generally referred to as the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), was established in 1981 as a regional intergovernmental union. Its members are the Kingdom of Bahrain, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Sultanate of Oman, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the State of Kuwait and the Emirate of Qatar. They are all located on the Arab side of the Arabian/Persian Gulf. The council was formed in reaction to the Iranian Revolution and aimed to establish institutions that would facilitate cooperation between its members in political, military, economic and social domains. Its ultimate goal was to unify member statesâ economic, monetary, commercial and financial policies. The GCC has accomplished some of its goals, as there are no custom duties among GCC states, citizens do not need a passport to travel across state boundaries and GCC businesses enjoy equity investments and have special access to all GCC ports (Metz, 1993). The monetary union, however, has proved more difficult and has been put on hold. Politically, the GCC members are not always in agreement, as witnessed by the 2014 rift between Qatar and the rest of the GCC members in response to political events in Egypt.
Due to its strategic location and oil wealth, US interests in the region have intensified sometimes at the expense of the United Kingdom. The PalestinianâIsraeli conflict, the Iranian Revolution, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and subsequent Gulf Wars, the 9/11 attacks and the resulting US-led Afghanistan and Iraq wars have all impacted the GCC (Peterson, 2014). In addition, the events surrounding the Arab Spring led to mass protests in Bahrain, which awakened and intensified sectarian strife. Oman also experienced smaller protests, and most of the GCC governments responded to these political challenges by increasing social benefits while cracking down on some dissident groupings. Finally the failures of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings against the autocratic and authoritarian regimes in the rest of the Middle East and North Africa region have further unsettled the Arabian Gulf and led the surviving regimes to find ways to tighten their grips on power even more. In particular, the collapse of state authority in much of Syria and the Arab Sunni regions of Iraq have allowed xenophobic âIslamistâ movements to establish a presence that clearly threatens Gulf rulersâ efforts to intensify liberal political economic intercourse with the world economy while maintaining the regionâs distinct political and cultural practices.
Despite these shocks, there is reason to believe that the monarchies of the region will maintain their authority. Bank et al. (2014) discuss four major factors which may explain the longevity of the monarchies in the Arabian Peninsula. These include external political and military support from Western powers, mainly the United States, the United Kingdom and France; the oil wealth that allows the rulers to ...
