New Delhi, Nov 3 (IANS) The regimes in the Gulf countries face no immediate threat though they will continue to feel the effect of the Arab Spring – popular uprisings in the north African countries like Egypt, Tunisia and Libya – a British professor said here.
‘The Gulf states will feel the effect of Arab Spring for some time. But their regimes are safe, for the next five years at least,’ said Tim Niblock, professor of Gulf Studies, University of Exeter, Britain.
He delivered a lecture on ‘Predicting the impact of the Arab Spring on the Arab States of the Gulf’ at Jamia Millia Islamia University here Thursday.
Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak were ousted while Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was ousted and killed in popular uprisings in their countries.
Stating that experts failed to predict the Arab Spring, Niblock said it happened due to five mistaken assumptions.
‘The experts believed the age of popular protests in the Arab world was over, that levels of socio-economic inequality were tolerable, regimes were internally strong and had a measure of public support, and the Arab identity was no longer meaningful within the Arab world,’ said Niblock.
That ‘proved to be wrong’, he added.
The professor said there are divergent views among the experts as to how the Arab Spring will impact the Gulf countries.
He said while the experts converge on the view that ‘no Gulf State has been left unaffected by the Arab Spring and people there do face problems like economic inequality and injustice’, they differ on ‘whether economic liberalisation in Gulf states led to cuts in welfare spending’ and ‘if the regimes had a degree of internal solidarity’.
