Excerpts: Saudi Arabia turning to East.Retriabalization emerging in the Arab
world.9 April 2006
+++THE DAILY STAR (Lebanon) 8 April '06:" EDITORIAL:Eastward shift of Saudi
perspective only makes sense"
QUOTE FROM TEXT:
"King Abdullah bin Abdel-Aziz has been directing the country's focus away
from the West and towards the countires of the East."
"oil windfalls that were once almost exclusively invested in the West
are now being directed towards countries in the East"
Editorial EXCERPTS:
In recent years, Saudi Arabia, which has long enjoyed a "special
relationship" with the United States, has been expanding its strategic and
economic alliances with other states. Since assuming the throne, King
Abdullah bin Abdel-Aziz has been directing the kingdom's focus away from the
West and toward the countries of the East. This shift was highlighted by
...King Abdullah's first foreign destination after assuming the throne in
August 2005 was China. ...which also took him to India, Malaysia and
Pakistan ... . This week Saudi Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdel-Aziz carried
the kingdom's eastward thrust further in Tokyo, where he agreed to start
talks on a free-trade agreement between Japan and the Gulf Cooperation
Council.
... Since the 1990s, the energy-rich Gulf states have looked increasingly
toward the East for investment opportunities, and oil windfalls that were
once almost exclusively invested in the West are now being directed toward
countries in the East. . . .
With their high-performing economies, these states can offer valuable
lessons in modernization. Both China and India have implemented economic
reforms, achieving the kind of rapid economic growth that Saudi Arabia hopes
to emulate.
... The Saudi Education Ministry announced in March that the kingdom would
send more students to countries like China, India, Singapore, Malaysia and
South Korea, as well as Australia, for higher studies. ...the kingdom will
pay for students to study in Japan. ... .
+++THE DAILY Star (Lebanon) 8 April '06:"If someone asks, my identity is the
Bourj"
By Rami G. Khouri, Staff
QUOTES FROM TEXT:
"Retriabalization, ethnic compartmentalization and localized
militarization are occuring on a large
scale"
"the fraility and brutality of the centralized Arab security state these
days"
"the Bourji, the place where different people forged common strenght"
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EXCERPTS:
If you want to appreciate a common malaise that afflicts the entire Arab
world, look at its cities, which project an external veneer of urbanism even
as inhabitants live lives mainly according to village and tribal values.
Retribalization, ethnic compartmentalization and localized militarization
are occurring on a large scale, as formerly mixed neighborhoods slowly
disentangle into more homogeneous districts defined by religion, ethnicity,
tribe or some other collective identity.
One of the great ironies in the Arab world during the past generation, since
the 1970s, has been the contradictory trend toward bigger and bigger cities,
without the parallel benefits of that phenomenon of richness that has always
defined the really great cities of the world - a sense of cosmopolitanism,
of transcending one's local space to interact with and be part of the larger
world, often literally the whole world when speaking of commercial and
cultural interaction.
In the period before the 1970s, before most Arab regimes were taken over by
soldiers and thugs, the majority of leading Arab cities ... were open to
foreign and regional traders, absorbed immigrants from other lands, welcomed
and benefited from foreign institutions that were often established by
religious missionaries, such as hospitals and schools, easily absorbed new
ideas and norms from abroad, and were naturally comfortable with a very wide
variety of local and foreign lifestyles manifested alongside each other.
... The armed guards of the narrow sectarian state did not need to determine
if you were legitimate or otherwise on the basis of your territorial or
tribal origin. Now they do. At airports, government departments and other
landscapes of crude power projection, many ordinary Arabs are routinely
asked about their family origins.
. . .
... As central state authority fractures or becomes belligerent against
some of its own people, citizens no longer see the government and central
armed forces as their protectors. Ordinary people seek protection and
identity in many other forms that are available and pertinent: tribe, clan,
neighborhood, religion, ethnic sect, ideological group, criminal gangs
dealing in drugs or guns, and other such groups that provide collective
defining identities.
... a timely and incisive new book, "Heart of Beirut: Reclaiming the Bourj,"
by Lebanese sociologist Samir Khalaf, ... recounts how Beirut's traditional
central square, the Bourj, developed its pivotal public role over the
centuries, ... .
The Bourj has always had the capacity to both affirm and transcend narrow
identities, allowing the natives to assert themselves while wandering into
adjacent and shared landscapes defined by Lebanese, Arab and Western
"others." ... to satisfy their "need for wonder, exhilaration, exposure to
new sensations, worldviews and the elevation of our appreciative
sympathies - which are all enhanced through connectedness with strangers
..."
... in Arab cities these days ...communities retreat into their own
cloistered spaces, often guarded by kids with Kalashnikovs. Beirut's Bourj
epitomized Arab urban civility and cosmopolitanism ...: "First, the
predisposition of the Bourj to incorporate and reconcile pluralistic and
multicultural features; second, its inventiveness in reconstituting and
refashioning its collective identity and public image; third, its role in
hosting and disseminating popular culture, consumerism, mass entertainment
and often nefarious tourist attractions."
The next time an Arab official or soldier asks me where I come from, I am
going to tell him I come from the Bourj, from a place where different people
forged common strength. And if he asks me where I am going, I will also say
I am going to the Bourj - to reclaim an Arab legacy of urban sensibility,
coexistence, civility and multicultural fun. . . .
Sue Lerner, Associate - IMRA
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