Forget Dubai, Most Arab States Are Weak & Violent, 66% of People in West Asia Are Poor—Talmiz Ahmad

In a 40-minute interview to Karan Thapar for The Wire, to launch his book ‘West Asia at War: Repression, Resistance and Great Power Games’, Talmiz Ahmad says that Arab states are often violent because they are weak. They lack the support of their people, which is why they are tyrannies.

Talmiz Ahmad, who has twice served as Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and also as Ambassador to Oman and UAE and is presently the Ram Sathe Professor of International Studies at Symbiosis University in Pune, says: “After a hundred years, not a single Arab state provides for any modicum of popular participation in state decision-making. National financial accounts remain non-transparent and without accountability. Though oil wealth is depleting, its revenues are still used to back state efforts at co-option and coercion – the latter now becoming more open, more crude, more vicious … and more frequent.”

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