House of Saud: dead regime walking.
washingtonpost.com
'...Saudi Arabia's male unemployment rate is 30 percent. Its population growth -- birth control is disapproved -- is among the most rapid in the world (3 percent per year). Eric Rouleau, a French diplomat, writing in Foreign Affairs ("Trouble in the Kingdom"), says that since the overthrow of the Taliban, Saudi Arabia is the Islamic world's most rigorous theocracy: "Universities require male professors teaching women's classes to give their lectures through a closed-circuit one-way television system . . . 30 to 40 percent of the course hours in schools are devoted to studying scripture." Furthermore, the marriage rate is dropping sharply:
"Unable to afford the traditional dowry, many young Saudi men are now doomed to a prolonged celibacy. At the same time, growing numbers of young women are refusing to marry men chosen for them by their families, men whom their would-be brides are not allowed to meet before their wedding night. As a result, an estimated two-thirds of Saudi women now between 16 and 30 years of age cannot, or will not, marry."
Sooner or later, and probably sooner, all this will meet its match in modernity. America's reluctant semi-allies in Europe should support American actions that hasten that day. Demography is, if not destiny, at least a shaper of nations' fates, and Francis Fukuyama of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies notes demographic trends that give Europe a huge stake in the transformation of the Middle East.
Barring a surge of immigration into Europe, which the political climate there precludes, by 2050 the median age in Europe will be approaching 60. But in the Middle East, North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, the median age will be about 21 -- which, Fukuyama notes, is what has been normal through most of history. "So you're going to have this little island of well-to-do elderly people surrounded by vast numbers of people who are a good deal younger and poorer, all wanting to move to the island."
If Iraq's next government derives its powers from the consent of the governed, the entire region may be changed. "Brazil," according to a familiar jest, "is the country of the future -- and always will be." Many people too pessimistically believe that the Arab world is next on the list of regions to experience democratization -- and always will be.' |
