Last Monday, Saudi Arabia unveiled an ambitious long-term economic plan to make the Kingdom less reliant on oil. The plan, titled “Saudi Vision 2030,” will be implemented over the coming 15 years with the aim to build a “prosperous and sustainable economic future.” In addition to regulatory, budget and policy changes, the planned economic diversification also involved selling about 5 percent of shares of the giant Aramco oil company, localizing industrial equipment sector, creating 90,000 jobs, raising the share of non-oil exports in gross domestic product from the current16 percent to 50 percent.
Other reforms include creation of the “largest sovereign wealth fund in the world,” building high-quality tourism attractions, lowering the rate of unemployment among the young population from 11.6 percent to 7 percent and increasing women quota in the work force to 30 percent.
Economic experts are busy analyzing prospects of implementing this plan especially when oil prices are at an all-time low.
The announcement took some observers by surprise. However, those who know the Kingdom and its leadership were not surprised at all. Since the day Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman ascended the throne, he has been busy taking decisive measures.
Bold and decisive, as one expert has described him, King Salman is determined to put the country on the right track by reengineering local institutions and councils, shaking the hierarchy of the executive power and asserting the Kingdom’s role as leader of the Arab and Muslim worlds.
The Saudi Vision 2030 is the brainchild of Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. While announcing the economic plan and during his interview with Al-Arabiya, his intellectual potential and economic know-how were crystal clear. Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said, “He has a very good group of advisers and the plan is not a desperate but a deliberate preventive measure.”
It was clear that the deputy crown prince wasn’t gambling because the future of the whole nation is at stake. To those who are skeptical about the success of the plan, he has proved that he is not beating about the bush but in fact it was evident that he was fully confident when he said that the forefathers had run the country without oil and “we can live in 2020 without oil” and that the Kingdom has three points of strength: Its Arab and Muslim depth, its investment strength and its geographic location.
His interests were also clear: Improving quality of life for the Saudi citizens, promoting culture, entertainment and tourism, building museums and excavating ancient civilizations in the Arabian Peninsula.
He has also proved to be sensitive toward the poor as is evident from his statement, “It is unacceptable that power and water subsidies should go to the rich.”
To him, there are no exemptions: “Power and water tariffs will be applied to princes and ministers. Any subsidies will be for the disadvantaged and low-income people…”
This is an indication that the leadership is determined to fight the opportunists who were amassing wealth through corrupt means at the cost of the country’s economic security and its international reputation.
Saudi Arabia on a new path
Saudi Arabia on a new path
Letters on Afghanistan: For Rahimullah
As an Op-Ed editor, I know that people are deeply attached to the opinions they put down on paper. They’ve worked on every comma and capital letter. I’ve edited the words of ex-Presidents, ex-army chiefs, sitting ministers, diplomats, experts and journalists. I have fought hard battles just to edit the titles of pieces, to move a paragraph up or down, to cut out a line. All my writers are distinguished and knowledgable, and so all of them prefer their work published a certain way. All writers, maybe all people, have a natural vanity about their opinions.
All of them that is, except Rahimullah Yusufzai.
Rahimullah, who died on Thursday, was an award-winning Pakistani journalist, and spent his life reporting on Afghanistan. He was the stoic narrator of its long theatre of war, his credentials faultless and his word held in the highest esteem by people on all sides of that conflict. Famously, he interviewed both Mullah Omar and Osama Bin Laden, and the iconic 1998 photograph of bin Laden smiling inside a neon green tent was taken by his hand. It is not a stretch to say only a few other journalists are as high an authority on Afghanistan as Rahimullah was.
But side by side, Rahimullah was a reporter in the truest sense. He would call me up, because he wanted to ‘hear from his editor.’ He would send updates to his columns late into the night. He would pitch his pieces for me to assign.
“Is my topic fine, editor?” he would ask.
I’d laugh.
‘For Amal,’ was the title of his columns. As though he had written it only for me. A letter, not a column, on Afghanistan.
“Sir, you were in Kandahar reporting on these guys when I was in kindergarten,” I told him.
“But you are still the editor,” he said.
Rahimullah never questioned the edits, he never protested about the titles, the extracts, the tweets. He did his work, he wrote his reports and his columns, and then he passed on his 800 words to ‘the editor’ with ultimate faith. It was his faith not in me, but in the institution of journalism.
In January last year, Rahimullah lost his wife and didn’t write for three weeks. He sent me an apology and an explanation as straightforward as his reporting.
“It was Allah's will and we have no say in these matters,” he said.
Throughout his illness, he continued to write for us at Arab News. When Kabul fell to the Taliban last month, all of us naturally turned to him for his point of view. It could be nobody else. Who else but Rahimullah could write on the most important development in Afghanistan in two decades. Though seriously ill and very frail, when asked he said simply, “Yes, I will write.”
His last piece was published with us on Wednesday, only a day before he died.
Rahimullah always emailed his pieces untitled. Instead, the document was named after myself and my colleague, Iraj. Perhaps this was the result of decades of typing up quick copies for the wires.
‘For Amal,’ was the title of his columns. As though he had written it only for me. A letter, not a column, on Afghanistan.
Well, I now have three years worth of letters written by one of the greatest reporters of our time, addressed to me.
It has been the honor of my life to work with Rahimullah, and though there will be many Afghanistan columns falling into my inbox in the months and years to come, never again will one be as true or as humble-- or be written only for me.
Rest in peace, sir.
– The writer is an editor, Arab News Pakistan.
Tweets @amalkhan
