The King Fahd Causeway, connecting Saudi Arabia and Bahrain
By Alan J. Kirk
Bahrain’s Information Affairs Authority pulled the plug on the brand new pan-Arab news channel Alarab just hours after going live, stating it was not “following Gulf norms,” but rather promoting “extremism." At the very moment the lights went out, the news channel was featuring an interview with Bahraini Shia opposition activist Khalil al-Marzooq, who has supported protests against the government since the uprising in 2011.
The news story being covered during the interview concerned 72 Bahrainis who recently had their citizenship revoked because they were journalists, political opposition members, human rights activists, or accused of being IS-affiliated extremists. Because some among the accused were proven to have actual affiliations with IS, the Bahraini monarchy rationalized that the whole group were extremists—therefore Alarab was supporting extremism.
Saudi billionaire Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal is the owner of the news channel, which launched in Bahrain with a prior agreement that it would run independent, editorial pieces and be given liberal financial subsidies. The agreement fell short, however, when Alarab decided to have al-Marzooq as its first guest.
Besides the blatant disregard for freedom of the press, it is also important to note that Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal, a liberal by any measure in the Wahabbi sect, is also the nephew of the new Saudi King Salman. Under the late King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, Saudi Arabia sent troops along with the UAE to Bahrain in order to squash the Shia majority’s uprising in 2011. This begs the question of why would a Saudi Royal family member decide to run a story on his own news channel about a Shia opposition member in Bahrain, where the Saudis helped squash the uprising?
While the idea that Prince Al Waleed wished to start an independent news agency of his own is understandable, the notion that such an organization would interview a Shia opposition member in Bahrain right from the onset is more difficult to comprehend. Even with the guarantee of Alarab's independence, it goes without saying that interviewing political dissidents in the Gulf monarchy is not part of the agreement, especially given Saudi Arabia’s involvement in the micro-state.
Even more troubling is the fact that Shiite dissent is brewing in the oil-rich Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. Any speculation that a Saudi Royal family member is open to the idea of engaging with the Shiite community could spark an outright uprising among Saudis, as Bahrain has witnessed. Such unrest could prove disastrous as oil prices are extremely low and petroleum accounts for approximately 45 percent of the Kingdom’s GDP and 90 percent of its export earnings. An opening in authoritarian rule is often followed by more demands by the opposition group until a balance is struck between the competing political groups; that is unless the opposition group is crushed by military force.
Speculation leads one to wonder if Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal’s motives are not aligned with the rest of the House of Saud, or whether a more serious political divide within the Saudi royal family exists. It is possible that a faction within the Saudi Family wishes to be more liberal-minded in governance but domestic politics keeps their hands tied. Through Alarab, Prince Al Waleed may have been trying to influence Persian Gulf nations, the world at large, and even the Kingdom itself through less direct methods, a move which Qatar successfully accomplished with Al Jazeera.
However, conservative imams continue to hold considerable weight in the Kingdom and often remark that the monarchy is “too worldly”—or rather, not religiously conservative enough. Under that backdrop, the Kingdom cannot safely maneuver such liberal reforms vis-à-vis the imams unless strong internal pressure (and external pressure, to some extent) forces the monarchy to act.
Obviously, domestic politics in Saudi Arabia are more complex than they appear from the surface, let alone from outside the palace. What lies beneath Prince Al Waleed’s motives could reveal much as to the political orientation of the Saudi Kingdom in the coming years. Given the fact that King Salman decided to reshuffle the Kingdom immediately upon ascension (before King Abdullah was even buried) into what some analysts consider a more conservative regime than his predecessors, it may shed some light on the cleavage between the two sides. Assumedly, King Salman’s conservative base is possibly at odds with the liberal-oriented faction which Prince Al Waleed seems to represent.
Beyond his place in the monarchy, Prince Al Waleed is also a high-level, billionaire tycoon who has described himself in the past as simply “a dollar man.” His motives in creating Alarab may be as simple as the thought that an independent news agency in the Arabian Gulf would earn him large sums of money. In which case, Al Waleed drastically overstepped his boundaries as the ordeal ruffled feathers in both Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, neither of which would tolerate such a news organization if money was the sole motive for its existence.
However, I sense Prince Al Waleed’s intellect is much more profound, knowing full well that the Bahraini government would not allow a Shia opposition leader from the Al-Wefaq political party to go on air. As a Saudi entrepreneur worth over $20 billion, he knows two things very well: business and political risk in the region. Keeping that in mind, Prince Al Waleed’s motivations appear to signal ambitions to wield greater influence over the Kingdom, rather than throwing money at a vanity business experiment in free speech.
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Alan J. Kirk is a master’s candidate at Seton Hall University, specializing in Foreign Policy Analysis and the Middle East, with a focus on the Persian Gulf.
[Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons]