Saudi Arabia

Fire of Liberty

Amir Taheri has an excellent commentary in The Times on the ground-shaking events occurring within Saudi Arabia, namely the recent election. While the election was nothing like the one in Afghanistan or Iraq, the people in Saudi Arabia have been presented with the chance to choose someone in an election as their representative in their respected municipal council. The biggest thing that this election has demonstrated is that allowing elections won't bring in a mass influx of Islamic fundamentalists that the Saudi regime and State Department official have been so quick to note is the reason for the lack of elections. Though I'm not well versed in Saudi politics and culture, I still know that fundamentalists abhor elections and anything that resembles an open Democracy. If they can't completely retain power via force, they are even less likely to participate in something where the people hold the power.

I think Taheri puts it best in the following passage:

Change in Saudi Arabia is bound to be tortuous and slow. But even this conservative society is being drawn into the Middle East’s new political pattern. That pattern began to take shape with the destruction of the Taleban in Kabul and the Baathists in Baghdad. The Afghan and Iraqi regimes represented the two grand ideas, Islamism and pan-Arab nationalism, that dominated the politics of the region since the 1960s. Now united in Iraq in what looks like their last desperate stand, these evil twins know that the spread of freedom will administer them the coup de grâce.

Amir Taheri surely keeps his hand on the pulse of the Arab World.