Understanding the Saudi stance

Saad Al-Dosari

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News' point-of-view

The report that profiled Saudi Arabia and was published by The Economist earlier this month was a bit unjust. In a lot of its parts, it was like an opinion article rather than a journalistic profile.Nevertheless, it is always an intriguing opportunity to see how others are looking at you, how they perceive you, make sense of your actions and try to spend the least of efforts to understand your motives and relate to your personality.What The Economist got right is that we, and the whole world for that matter, are passing through a very tight economical bottleneck these days. The mounting pressure of the declining oil prices combined with the adventures of our Persian neighbor are forcing us, the region, and the whole world, to take measures that were not even on the table a couple of years ago.Sometimes going to war is not a decision for a nation to contemplate; it becomes an unavoidable eventuality, an inevitable choice; that is exactly what happened in Yemen. It is a war against terrorism and an effort to stop the bloody game Tehran is playing to throw the whole region into chaos.To Iran, it is a holy mission to avenge the past, at least this is what they are trying to sell to the public in order to keep the fire of hatred burning. To us, it was not an adventure but a necessity.The Economist also did not understand the execution of terrorists in Saudi Arabia. Those criminals were not partially linked to Al-Qaeda; actually, all of them, no matter of which Muslim background they came from, actively tried to destabilize the country, not through preaches, seminars, and white papers, but through guns, bombs and calls for blood and death. They had to be captured, they had to face the law of the lands they were terrorizing.What The Economist got right though is that Saudi Arabia is serious about its economic transformation plans. It is right that the plans are not necessarily new; diversification of national income and drastically restructuring the government work and its financial policies have always been on the table, sometimes parts of long-term plans and sometimes in hopes and discussions of those interested in this country’s stability. The fact that we need to face and admit is that the implementation of those plans and translating them into actions has always been a bit slow. However, the Saudi government is decisive in its efforts to reform the economy, reaching its core to modify and correct. It is a tough operation, but once succeeded, it will usher in a new era for the country and its people.