Alwaleed bin Talal: from Saudi prince to king of Twitter?
Note: This article is from the Guardian.
This article titled “Alwaleed bin Talal: from Saudi prince to king of Twitter?” was written by Brian Whitaker, for guardian.co.uk on Tuesday 20th December 2011 15.23 UTCLast February, as the Arab uprisings spread to more and more countries – aided in part by the use of social media – a story circulated that King Abdullah, the Saudi monarch, had offered 0bn in cash to buy out Facebook and presumably close it down “in order to end the Arab revolt”.
The original story was a spoof but since oil-rich regimes are noted for splashing their money around as a way of suppressing dissent it had a ring of credibility and others soon regurgitated it as fact. The Saudi government also failed to see the joke and issued a straight-face denial saying: “The report is totally baseless.”
So a bit of caution was in order when news broke on Monday that a Saudi prince has acquired a 0m stake in Twitter. This time, though, the story is true and it has been causing some alarm on the internet. One fairly typical comment said:
“A billionaire from one of the most backward, repressive regimes in the world now owns a chunk of one of the most critical social/communications lifelines in the world. Who and what will he demand be censored in exchange for his huge investment?”
The prince in question, Alwaleed bin Talal, is a nephew of the Saudi king but the two men have little in common beyond the royal blood. Alwaleed is noted for his progressive views and, thanks to his privileged position, he is able to push at the red lines without getting into too much trouble.
He caused a stir in 2004, for example, by paying for the training of a female Saudi pilot and then hiring her to fly his company’s private jets – even though Saudi custom prevented her from driving a car on the ground.
In an article for the New York Times earlier this year, he called on Arab countries to embrace “unwavering, enduring and sincere” reform.
One reform he has been trying to encourage inside Saudi Arabia is the reintroduction of cinema in the face of opposition from conservatives, including his own brother, Prince Khaled.
Two years ago, one of his companies, Rotana, sponsored a film festival in Jeddah which was banned by the authorities just hours before it was due to open. Some suggested the ban had been inspired by his brother, since it came shortly after Prince Khaled had accused him of “spreading depravity and lust” with his “corrupting projects”.
Rotana is also the largest producer of Arab music – which the more traditional Saudis regard as immoral. Cynics might point out that Alwaleed’s media companies would certainly profit from liberalising the rules for films and music, though that doesn’t seem to be his main motivation.
The most likely reason for his interest in Twitter is its huge undeveloped potential in the Middle East. Tweeting by Arabs has grown exponentially over the last few months, largely as a result of the uprisings.
Seeking to restrict that growth through proprietorial interference would scarcely be a sensible business strategy, and in any case the first to complain would probably be @AmeerahAltaweel (his wife), @TalalAbdulaziz (his father) and @Rima_Talal (his sister).
By most calculations Alwaleed’s 0m stake in Twitter works out at less than 4% of the company’s value, so it’s not as significant as it might appear at first sight. More disturbing for some is his chummy relationship with Rupert Murdoch. The prince is News Corp’s biggest shareholder outside the Murdoch family and last year News Corp bought a stake in Alwaleed’s Rotana.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010
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Saudi king commissions gold-leaf train
Note: This article is from the Guardian.
It may have been a tough year for Arab regimes facing unprecedented popular demands for change. But King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has signalled serene royal continuity by ordering the construction of a specially equipped private train to whisk him and his entourage between the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
The luxurious VIP train is being built by the Saudi-Spanish al-Shoula consortium as part of the .4bn (£6bn) high-speed Haramain rail project to connect the two cities, revered by Muslims, and Jeddah, the entry point for hajj pilgrims.
According to al-Shoula, the royal design will be based on the ordinary rolling stock being manufactured for the project, and will consist of 13 coaches. But their decor, Constructionweekonline.com reported on Tuesday, will be considerably “more lavish interior decor featuring plentiful gold leaf, especially on the ceilings”.
King Abdullah, 87, will enjoy the use of an audience chamber, a bedroom, two guest suites and a dining lounge, as well as meeting rooms.
The train will be able to accommodate up to 30 people and have its own hybrid power supply to enable it to run if power is cut from the main line. It will be able to run on the high-speed line or on other conventional lines.
The rolling stock for 35 electric trains is being built in southern Spain by Talgo. The ordinary trains will have a total seating capacity of 400-500.
The Saudi monarchy has authorised spending 0bn on subsidies, government salaries and housing programmes in an attempt to avoid Arab spring-type protests, though the Haramain (two holy places) rail project is part of a wider drive to upgrade the conservative kingdom’s freight and passenger transportation.
When the 280-mile line is finished, five trains will arrive or depart from Mecca every hour. Trains will be air conditioned and fully sealed to prevent sand from entering. First class, business and economy class tickets will be available.
The line is expected to serve 166,000 passengers a day. Trains travelling at speeds of up to 200mph will pass through Jeddah, on the Red Sea coast, and connect with King Abdullah Economic City, now under construction. The trip from Medina to Mecca will take around two hours.
Muslim pilgrims could travel by rail to Medina a century ago on a line that began in the Syrian capital, Damascus. Most of it was blown up by Britain’s TE Lawrence (of Arabia), who led the Arab guerrillas fighting for independence from the Ottoman empire during the first world war.
The Haramain contract was the biggest ever awarded to a Spanish company – an illustration of the importance of the Saudi market to cash-strapped western countries. Britain’s Invensys won the bid to construct and maintain signalling and train control systems worth £420m.
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Middle East royal news
- UAE leader promises more political rights to citizens
- Senior Saudi royal resigns from Allegiance Council
- Anti-royal graffiti on walls of eastern Saudi
- Bahrain admits uprising forcibly crushed
- Bahrain used "excessive force" in crackdown, says inquiry
- Royals listen to harsh summary of inquiry on live TV
Middle East royal news
Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz obituary
Note: This article is from the Guardian.
The death of Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz, at the age of 80 (some sources say he was six years older), highlights the dangers of a power vacuum in Saudi Arabia, which is responsible for 25% of the world’s oil. The kingdom is ruled by a frail gerontocracy, despite its oil wealth and political vulnerability. Sultan was the half-brother of the 87-year-old King Abdullah. The conservative Wahhabi kingdom has survived the Arab spring largely because Abdullah has provided 0bn (£81.5bn) in welfare aid.
As the Arab spring unwound, Sultan’s role as Saudi defence and aviation minister was crucial, particularly in Bahrain, whose minority Sunni regime was supported by Saudi tanks in March. That adventure was run by Prince Nayef, the 78-year-old interior minister, who is likely to replace Sultan as crown prince.
Born in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, Sultan was the second of the elite “Sudairi seven”, the sons of the kingdom’s founder, King Abdul-Aziz Al Saud (commonly known as Ibn Saud) by his wife Hussa bint Ahmad al-Sudairi. Ibn Saud had some 45 recorded sons by as many as 32 wives of whom she was pre- eminent. A dominant mother, she insisted that all of her high-profile sons dine with her once a week. Fahd, the eldest, eventually became king in 1982.
Sultan received an early education in theology, modern culture and diplomacy at the royal court, where he also acquired good English. He became governor of Riyadh in 1947. In that year he oversaw the Arabian American Oil Company’s (Aramco’s) construction of a rail link between Dammam in the eastern province and Riyadh. He joined the cabinet in 1953, the year that Ibn Saud died and was succeeded as king by his son Saud. Sultan became agriculture minister, helping to settle Saudi Arabia’s bedouin on modern farms and was considered hardworking and pugnacious. In 1955 he was appointed communications minister, a post he held until 1962.
That year Sultan became the kingdom’s defence and aviation minister. When it became clear to the princes that King Saud was a failure, Sultan pressed for his abdication in favour of the charismatic Faisal, demanding that it should be brought about by force, if necessary. He stepped down in March 1964, and Faisal became king that November. Sultan was considered intelligent with innate worldly wisdom, a man on whom the king might rely.
Sultan oversaw Saudi Arabia’s participation in North Yemen’s bloody civil war in the 1960s which pitted monarchists against republicans supported by Nasser’s Egypt. After the 1963 ceasefire the UN Swedish commander Carl von Horn believed that Sultan, “a volatile and emotional young man”, had breached the ceasefire, allowing arms to cross to monarchist rebels against the wishes of King Faisal. Sultan’s attempts to support the South Yemen sheikhs after Britain’s withdrawal from Aden ended in fiasco when his liberation army based in Najran was cut to pieces by troops in the south inherited from the British colonial authorities.
Faisal was assassinated in 1975, and Khaled became king, with Fahd named crown prince. When Egypt signed the Camp David peace accords with Israel in 1978, Fahd and Sultan proposed continued close relations with the US, while Khaled and Abdullah, who was then a National Guard commander, advocated distancing Saudi Arabia from the US. Sultan was deeply involved in the US’s covert campaign to provide money and weapons to the mujahideen fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan.
People who knew Sultan praised his “strategic vision, the capacity to think big”, in particular after the 1973/74 oil price rises. Nevertheless, he had his critics. One analyst said that he presided over “the most colossal amount of money, in proportion to the size of a country’s economy, ever poured down the barrel of a gun”.
Sultan created a massive military establishment in Saudi Arabia through arms purchases from the US, the UK and France. He built military cities, largely with US support. However, the massive British-supported defence programme was also crucial. The 1988 al-Yamamah contract was described as Britain’s largest ever export deal, worth at least £43bn, though its full extent has not been fully documented. It was later the focus of corruption charges in the UK and the US. Although Sultan was not named in these probes, members of his family were. According to David Holden in The House of Saud (1981), in the early 1970s “the majority share of transactions is said to have gone to Sultan in a ratio of about 60:40″.
In 1990 US forces were deployed in Saudi Arabia to defend it against the Iraqi forces that had overrun Kuwait. His son Prince Khaled served as the top Arab commander in Operation Desert Storm, in which US, Saudi and other Arab forces drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait. In 2005, when Abdullah succeeded Fahd to the throne, Sultan became crown prince, despite rumours that he was not getting on with Abdullah.
Sultan had a reputation for a fierce temper but his habit of working deep into the night won him the nickname of “bulbul” – nightingale. He was both a conservative and political moderate. “Sultan,” wrote Holden, “whose vigour on the couch was a cause for even more concern and respect, had proved a stern, tough and headstrong character.”
For some time, he was said to have suffered from ill-health, having been diagnosed with colon cancer in 2004 and latterly affected by Alzheimer’s disease. “Crown Prince Sultan has been for all intents and purposes incapacitated by illness for at least [the] past year,” the US embassy in Riyadh wrote in a cable in May 2009, according to Wikileaks. He spent about a year abroad, recuperating in the US and at a palace in Agadir, Morocco, before returning to Saudi Arabia in November 2010, a day before King Abdullah himself went to New York for medical treatment after a blood clot complicated a slipped spinal disk.
Sultan had some 32 children by 10 wives. His son Bandar was Saudi ambassador to the US from 1983 to 2005, during which time he formed close relations with both presidents Bush.
• Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud, politician, born 30 December 1930; died 20 October 2011
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