Behind the revolts

It's not poverty or Islam

Last Updated: 2:06 AM, March 7, 2011

Amir Taheri

A Week ago, if anyone had asked me to name one Arab country that might remain unaffected by the current wave of revolts I would have said: Oman. Yet now it, too has been shaken by uprisings, from Salalah in the south to the capital Muscat to Nizwah in the north.

Occasional soccer matches aside, Omanis had never gathered together in such numbers. To see them march in their thousands against the regime was truly historic. What happened?

Sources in Washington tell me that the Obama administration's experts have "identified" the causes of the Arab revolt. But their diagnosis amounts to a rehash of old clichés about poverty, Islam and hostility toward Israel and America -- none of which applies to Oman.

REUTERS

Simmering sultanate: Never before roused, Omanis like these protesters in Sohar have joined the revolt for political reform.

Occupying a narrow strip at one end of the Arabian Peninsula, the sultanate has slumbered since the 19th century, when the British turned it into a protectorate.

With a population of 2 million, it doesn't have big cities, like Cairo or even Libya's Benghazi, where mass poverty supposedly breeds rebellion. Compared to Egyptians or Yemenis, most Omanis could be described as well to do.

Islam? A majority of Omanis are Ibadhis, espousing a moderate version of Islam regarded by mainstream sects as heretical. Just 1 percent of Muslims, Ibadhis are always anxious to keep religion out of politics.

Nor does hostility toward America and Israel apply. Oman has hosted big US air and naval bases since the '70s. From the Mussandam Peninsula, America keeps an eye on the Hormuz Strait, the world's principal oil route. From the Omani island of Mussandam, it ensures freedom of navigation in the Indian Ocean.

As for hating the Jewish state, Oman is one of the few Arab countries to have welcomed Israeli personalities, among them Shimon Peres, and to allow Israeli participation in trade fairs and cultural festivals.

Throughout the Omani demonstrations, there were no anti-US or anti-Israeli slogans.

It's important to understand what this revolt is about -- not only in Oman but in all Arab states to feel the wave. This isn't a revolt of the poor. That happened in a dozen Arab states a decade ago, under the label of "bread riots." This revolt belongs to partly Westernized and fairly comfortable urban middle classes, with technology-savvy youth in the lead.

Ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak mistook it for an economic revolt and tried to calm it with a 15 percent salary hike. Algeria's President Abdulaziz Bouteflika is making the same mistake, by ordering lavish subsidies for consumer goods.

In Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah has put $35 billion on the table to pay for wage increases and handouts. Moammar Khadafy has ordered banks to pay anyone with a Libyan identity card the equivalent of $2,000.

In Iran, not an Arab country but fearful that the revolt might affect it, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is travelling in the provinces to distribute cash and promises.

What we see in the greater Mideast is a political upheaval, not an economic revolt. People are fed up with being treated as subjects of a pharaoh, sultan, emir, sheik or "supreme guide." They want a new relationship with their governments, based on respect for the citizen.

This isn't an Islamic revolt, as (according to The Washington Post) Obama advisers claim. Only Khadafy endorses that claim, when he says that the Libyan revolt is led by al Qaeda.

Anyone who listens to what people are saying from Marrakech to Muscat would know that, this time around, Islam is not an issue and religious groups play no part.

Muhammad Badi'e, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood's "supreme guide," acknowledges as much. "This is not our revolution," he tells anyone who cares listen. "We just want to be part of it."

Indeed, the historic retreat of Islamist groups (caused as much by repression as popular rejection) is one thing that made this revolt possible. No longer afraid that bringing down a despotic secular regime might land them with an Islamist one, urban middle classes have taken the path of revolt.

This is not an anti-American revolt, either. If anything, the new Arab revolutionaries may want their countries to come closer to America -- not as client states but as equal partners.

Neither is Israel an issue. "We are trying to take control of our country," says Ali al-Hassan, a leader of the Omani revolt. "Once we have a people's government, we would think of other issues."

A Bahraini rebel leader is more direct. "Palestine?" she asks. "The whole thing bores me!"

For decades, Arab despots hoodwinked US administrations into believing that change would bring Islamists to power and threaten American interests and Israel's existence. It is time to discard that theory.

President Obama should look at the new political landscape with fresh eyes, and side with the people against despots.

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