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Jon Alterman: Kristin Dwan is a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf states Institute in Washington, DC. Kristin, welcome to Babel.
Kristin Diwan: Hi Jon. How are you this morning?
Jon Alterman: Good, thanks, you?
Jon Alterman: You've written about how the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohamed bin Salman, has tried to capture the imaginations of young people—tried to capture the narrative—and take it away from an “Arab Spring concept.” What do you mean by that, and how has it worked?
Kristin Diwan: Well, I think you have to remember that Mohammad bin Salman, himself, is a young man. He's coming from a similar millennial generation that a lot of these young people that were coming up were in, and he was very aware of what was happening. You could see this happening. The main element of this was social media and the revolution in technology that was allowing a lot of these young people to come together, to find each other, to express these interests in change, and to create these movements—whether they be creative movements or political movements. I think watching that—which they definitely were—they became aware of that.
Jon Alterman: You mean the government.
Kristin Diwan: Yes, I mean the government—and especially of the younger generation—someone like Mohammed bin Salman. He was able to see that there was this strong desire for a shift and a basis on which you could create change. So, I think when you look at the Saudi government today, they realize that there's a need to do a number of transformations in the Kingdom. The main drivers are economic because they know that the system can't be sustained on the oil economy as it is. They need economic diversification. They need young people to take on more responsibility in broader jobs within a diversified economy in the private sector. And they know that the political order as it was standing was not really going to be sufficient either— particularly the kind of constraints that were imposed by the social and Islamist order that they had themselves created. So, there was a need for all these changes. I think when they looked at that—and this was kind of happening over a long period of time—you can see this shift to a more nationalist order. And the nationalist order is the main ideological frame that can pull these things together. It's a national order that's very much under the Al Saud—so the link to the royal family is still very strong—and while it doesn't allow for the political demands that were present, it does create more space for participation in public life. It really dramatically changed the public life of the kingdom-- allowing a lot more gender mixing and a lot more room for creative endeavors and for entertainment—things that were completely lacking in the kingdom before. In a way, they were able to split these broader demands that were happening from below—meeting some of the interests in these social reforms and changes—while really stymieing any of the political demands that were inherent in some of those movements.
Jon Alterman: One of the interesting things that I was thinking about as I was reading some of your work on this, is that on the one hand Saudi Arabia is pushing a nationalist narrative. But part of what's also going on is that Saudi Arabia is becoming less different from so many places in the region and the world. Saudi Arabia was really different, and it feels like some of these changes are making Saudi Arabia more normal—and I say that not in a normative way, but because it's just more like other places. And yet, you also say that there is an important element of creating a sense of nationalism around being less different. How does that work?
Kristin Diwan: It's both nationalist while opening up and being more global and cosmopolitan at the same time, and I think sometimes you can see a bit of a tension between those two elements. When you look at how Saudi Arabia is approaching this, you can see the desire to keep a strong Saudi element. From a perspective from yourself or myself—the perspective of someone who looked at Saudi Arabia and put a lot of the character of Saudi Arabia in the old religious establishment and those kinds of links—now there's a desire to really empower this creative class to generate Saudi cultural elements. Through the ministry of culture, they're creating visual arts programs. They're creating music programs and culinary programs. They’re doing this in all these different ways and encouraging them to express their “Saudiness” through these new creative endeavors.
Jon Alterman: There is clearly energy around this idea, and young people are behaving in ways that I've never seen young people behave in Saudi Arabia. People tell me stories about the 1970s—that there was more of this—but at least for this generation, these are things that they've never seen before. How effective do you think this effort is also at suppressing dissent? There are still conservatives in the kingdom—not only older conservatives, but younger conservatives. How do they interact with and engage with this new creativity and the press for innovation there? For decades, the kingdom has taught that innovation is suspect. What's the residue of that on this effort?
Kristin Diwan: I think it's very difficult to see that because—as you mentioned—those voices have been very effectively repressed. We saw this through the wave of arrests that came right after Mohamed bin Salman took over the position of crown prince. He did this through a very targeted arrest campaign that got all of the most influential people within the Islamic movements—including some of these young reformers that were looking for a way to marry a Saudi Islamic perspective with a new, more open order. They were silenced and arrested along with the others. Those arrested were people that had credibility and that were very often present on social media. They were very well-known voices. I think that shutting them down sent a message to everyone else because they targeted the thought leaders—and in some areas, the organizational leaders—to some of the older movements. On that political level, that was very effective. Then, of course, at the same time we had this real nationalist mobilization that was happening—where anybody who was falling out of line with this new national narrative was portrayed as being anti-Saudi. We could see the way that was used against the women’s rights activists—that were wanting changes along the lines of the social reforms that were already being taken—but still because the demands were coming from below, they were being portrayed as being linked to foreign feminists and suspect. So, I think that nationalist narrative was really important for disciplining this younger generation coming up and making them understand that this is going to be the way that things are going to go and you need to fall in line. The seizure of the media and the campaign against Qatar was very important in this too because it basically discredited wide swaths of media that were very resonant in this discourse of change that was taking place in the kingdom— whether it be a more liberal change or an Islamic kind of reformist change. The campaign against Qatar cut off those links and gave the government more control over all of the messaging and the media within the kingdom. It gave them the ability to control the direction of change.
Of course, this was all wrapped up in this broad shift under vision 2030. So, there was a really strong message that you need to get in line. We can definitely assume that there's a lot of discontent. There's a lot of disorientation—not being completely on board with all of them—with these incredible changes that have taken place. This wasn’t a slow transition when it happened, and in some ways, it wasn't very subtle. This is a complete cultural overhaul, so I think that for sure there's a lot of unease with that. At the same time, there's an understanding that there are big costs for speaking out against this, so the political suppression on that level has really worked.
Overall, that strong narrative from above has its impact. We’re going to be having a new generation that will grow up under this new nationalist narrative—under these new opportunities. Before, there weren't as many things that you could do after school. If you were a public minded person, you may have gone to an Islamist run summer camp or something like that. Now, there's going to be all these different creative outlets and different things. I think the idea is that over time, social engineering and social shifts will take place. The idea is that this will happen both through the political pressure—through the new narrative that's being established by a now a more unified media—and just through the new options and opportunities that are there, which many people are very excited about.
Jon Alterman: I know you paid a lot of attention to the Arab world for a long time because I've known you for a long time and we both paid attention to the Arab world. It seems like there are two trends. One trend is that there's a transition going on as a new generation thinks this is normal, and the other is that it's hard to sustain new things—that there's a way that a country’s culture and societies revert to the mean. We see that partly in the United States—with politics going back and forth—there's almost the pendulum. There has been a real effort to coerce tolerance in Saudi Arabia. Does that become harder? Does it become easier because people just become more tolerant? How do you see the next swing of the pendulum going as this is no longer, the bright, shiny new thing, but people are putting attention on something else, and this move recedes more into the background.
Kristin Diwan:There are a few elements of that. One is that—as I've been trying to describe to some degree—all these changes aren't fully coercion. There were those shifts—those cultural shifts—that were actually happening below the surface. I think they were more extensive than we could see just because the social control in the old Islamist order wasn't allowing those viewpoints to be displayed as much. I think that those changes were already a bit on the ground. When we look at the nationalist narrative, you can think, “wow, this is very new for Saudi Arabia.” But, then when you look globally, this is a trend happening internationally. We’re seeing this centralization of power, with much stronger states and nationalist orientation everywhere. So, in some ways, Saudi Arabia is coming into a place that's very familiar with the new nationalist order that we're seeing everywhere. I think to that degree, it may have a little bit more staying power than you might expect. On the other hand, it is all going to be dependent on the economic changes—which are a lot of the drivers for a lot of these things taking place. We don’t yet know how these big investments—the big bets that Saudi Arabia is making and these new industries its building—are going to work out. Those economic challenges are really going to weigh on the kingdom. How are they going to create jobs for all of these Saudis moving forward? This is not the UAE, and this is not Qatar. This is a country that has a much larger population, and a much bigger challenge in making that transition. I think it will be interesting to see when you have the formal language shift—the formal political identity shift. Does that mean that the opposition language will also shift? Before, you had a formal, Islamist state in Saudi Arabia and the opposition mirrored that in its Islamic language for change. When it's a more economic-oriented nationalist state, maybe we'll get a different kind of opposition language, too. When I look across the Gulf right now and the language that a lot of opposition movements are making, they have an Islamist element sometimes, but it's much more populist actually. That is also the counter face of nationalism as well. I would be looking for a more populist language to emerge from any sort of opposition that emerges in Saudi Arabia.
Jon Alterman: You mentioned other states in the Gulf. You spent a lot of time thinking about Kuwait. How are the processes in Saudi Arabia similar to processes going on in other places? Are there processes going on in other places that haven't yet reached Saudi Arabia? How should we situate Saudi Arabia in terms of a broader set of transitions in the Gulf as the Gulf looks toward an economic transition with the global energy transition?
Kristin Diwan: In actions taken by the Saudi state, I do think we see a lot of mirroring of what had been happening in the UAE actually. The UAE is a big leader in a lot of these trends—whether it be the strong nationalist orientation, the political suppression that goes along with that, the intolerance for anyone critiquing the strong direction of the national program, and the crackdown on Islamist movements. We saw that in the UAE before. We’ve also seen the strong social engineering and desire to educate and bring young Emiratis along so that they can contribute in different ways either to the economy or to the state. When I look at Saudi Arabia, I do see a lot of the things they're trying to mirror—the creation of new ports, the diversification strategies, even the new “green agenda.” A lot of these things had already been initiated in the UAE, so from the state level, those shifts are there and mirror changes in the UAE. On the social level, Kuwait is always interesting to look at. Politically it's more open, so it allows for us to see a lot of things that may be happening in some of the other states—but that are kind of below the surface.
When I was looking at youth movements, I could see a lot of young people who had left the Muslim brotherhood movements out of frustration with the movement. They were communicating with people in Saudi Arabia. Some of these reformers were going cross border. Neo-Arab nationalist—we could call it—movements were going across the border. I think those social links exist, but on the state level, I think what they're trying to do is much more patterned on the UAE.
Jon Alterman: Is what young people want the same in different states? Or do you think that that people in different environments want really different things?
Kristin Diwan: I think there are a lot of similarities in these shifts. When we looked at the Arab uprisings in 2011, the whole idea of dignity movements was very strong. The idea of having some voice from below—the frustration with a lot of the divisions within society were there and the desire for a kind of a stronger national unity was there. This is the kind of generational desire that you can see everywhere. It wasn't just in the Gulf. This is a generational thing. The kind of classic idea of the millennials as being a bit more of a maker generation and wanting to have more personal projects was there. Some of these things are generational beyond the Gulf region and are driven a lot by social media and the impacts and the communication networks and the different ways of thinking that that brings about. Some of them are linked in the Arab environment because they share a common language. We could see that in 2011. Now, we can see the appeal of some of these national movements and strong leadership. There is some appeal in that. Even while I see a lot of Saudis paying really close attention still to Kuwaiti politics, you also have Kuwaitis that are looking at Saudi Arabia and saying, “gosh, I wish we had a bigger push for a kind of social change, a bigger movement, some kind of national project going on.” So, I think all of the Gulf states are watching each other, and part of my interest is seeing which things will win out as dominant trends.
Jon Alterman: So, states are watching each other, and young people are watching each other. And of course, the states are watching the young people watching each other.
Kristin Diwan: Yeah. It’s both. Of course, the states ultimately have a lot of the power and control a lot of the messaging that’s going on.
Jon Alterman: How did you get started thinking about youth politics and youth culture? How do you keep up with it?
Kristin Diwan: I was doing a number of different things. I was going a lot to the region and just talking to people. I was a professor, so I was teaching young people. I was actually doing a lot of work on Islamic movements. Among the Muslim brotherhood movement, I was just really struck by the difficulty that they were having in recruiting, and I started looking a lot of these counter trends that were happening within Islamic movements—dissident youth, within those movements—and then branched from there to seeing how they were connecting to liberal reformers that had started through student movements in the United States. You had a big reform movement in Kuwait that came from the ideas from youth politics in the United States and in the United Kingdom. Then they brought that back home to what is the first foreign movement that was successful in mobilizing people on the streets. At that time, they didn't have Twitter or anything through the internet that were calling for protests in the street. They actually got a reformer into the political electoral system at that time.
I think that just watching the politics, you could see these shifts happening across the board. You could see this new energy amongst younger generations, and when social media did come about, it was much easier to follow on Twitter because all of these people were very present. You could see their views very clearly, and for a while, it was really open. It was as fascinating to see them connecting across different countries. I read Arabic, and this was mostly happening in Arabic. That was one way to track it, but I think it’s much more difficult to do that now. It is much more state-driven now and state-controlled. I run a blog called “Millennial Gulf,” and the initial idea behind that was to look for youth-led movements and initiatives. That was very easy to do at the time. Now, you can see that the states are much more controlling a lot of this space. It’s much harder to find things that aren't connected to the state anymore, and part of that has been the state realizing this energy and this need to respond to youth demands—or you can more cynically say “control youth demands.” They're much more active now in organizing this youth space and presenting many more initiatives that respond to youth demands.
Jon Alterman: Kristen Diwan, thank you very much for joining us on Babel.
Kristin Diwan: Thank you. It's a pleasure to talk to you, Jon, as always.