The New Generation of Revolutionaries

Saudi Arabia has known for a very long time that it has a problem on its hands. One it shares with all its neighbours, for the most part. Too many shiftless young people. It is not the women, who are strictured not to be seen in public unless clad in all-encasing garments and even then escorted by male family members who are of concern. It is the young men with too much idle time on their hands because there are not enough jobs to employ them gainfully.

What Saudi Arabia has been aware of is that without gainful employment for all these young men, marriage is not quite possible. Marriage softens the rough edges of virile young men, it keeps them out of trouble. The responsibilities that come with marriage, and raising a family ensures that young men will not become restless, will not agitate for change, will not become likely recruits for Islamism and jihad.

Which is paradoxical given that Saudi Arabia's very fundamentalist style of Islam, Wahhabi-style, has been responsible throughout other parts of the world in training young men who become susceptible to the allure of wild adventure in religiously-motivated, violent jihad, through their investment in madrassas. But then, it is one thing to export fundamentalist Islam, and another to welcome a threatening variant of it into one's homeland.

The aging royalty of the House of Saud recognizes its problem. But it has hundreds of billions of dollars in profit from its kingdom's fossil fuel extraction, and in that country money really is no problem. King Abdullah can return home from recovery from surgery and in celebration magnanimously hand out tens of billions of dollars to continue to buy the loyalty of his subjects. Which subjects, with rare exceptions, it seems, are more than happy to continue living under his rule.

Not for King Abdullah the migraine-inducing pain suffered by Tunisia, Bahrain, Yemen, Egypt, and the unspeakable Libya. All government employees will be enjoying a 15% pay raise. Social welfare programs, housing and education will receive stiff infusions of cash. There will be financial aid for an entire year for the unemployed, including presumably, those steaming youth who cannot find employment thus cannot purchase a home and a car, and go looking for a wife.

Of the 19 million citizens populating Saudi Arabia, 47% are age 18 or younger. And roughly 40% of all Saudis who are between 20 and 24 years of age are unemployed. So oops! There are activists in the country calling for economic reform and the creation of more jobs. They're also assuming that their combined voices may be instrumental in leading to freedom for women, free elections and political reforms.

But Saudi Arabia is a quietly efficient place where dissent is not brooked nor anticipated. And people really are fond of their benevolent monarchy. So it would be a real eye-opener if the social activists hoping for a better future for themselves and their youthful countrymen could amass enough support even from within their own demographic to mount a meaningful campaign.

Still, as one Middle East expert mused: "The new generation of revolution is surrounding them from everywhere."