The steady deepening of good governance in the Gulf states is having a significant effect in encouraging people to look ahead to the future with confidence. The young people of the Gulf are overwhelmingly optimistic about their future in stark contrast to their peers from the Levant who are naturally all too conscious of the anarchy that is destroying their countries, but also in contrast to the young people of the Arab states in North Africa who are evenly split on feeling optimistic or depressed about their countries’ futures.
This geographical split in the feeling of young Arabs was revealed in the 2017 Arab Youth Survey produced by Asda’a Burson-Marsteller earlier this week, with 85 per cent of young people in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states feeling that things in their countries are moving in the right direction, compared to 85 per cent in the Levant and Yemen feeling that their countries are moving in the wrong direction. This is not surprising since Syria, Iraq and Yemen are wracked by civil war and have fallen apart. Indeed it is surprising that the survey could find 14 per cent from the Levant and Yemen who were optimistic, although those respondents could have come from Lebanon, which is still stable, and south Yemen, where the coalition has started reconstruction. Young Arabs from the Maghrib were more or less equally split into 51 per cent as optimistic and 42 per cent gloomy about where they were heading.
Optimism
But the optimism in the peaceful Gulf is not based on a simple comparison with the Arab world’s war-torn regions. It is encouraging that the survey showed that the Gulf’s optimism is based on more local influences. An important example is the Gulf’s healthy economic situation, but in addition, young people also feel that their governments are working to put policies in place that address the issues that they face. In the Gulf, 85 per cent of young people wanted the government to do more to address their needs, and 86 per cent felt that this was being delivered. This was in radical contrast to a large disconnect between the 71 per cent in Yemen with the same hopes of their government, but only 21 per cent who thought that their hopes were being met.
The Arab Youth Surveys have been running for nine years and have regularly surprised observers with findings that have challenged stereotypes and revealed the aspirations of young Arabs in a much more realistic and complex manner. For example, the surveys found over many years that young Arabs remained consistently committed to family and religious values, while at the same time determined to be globally connected and technologically advanced. Before the revolutions of 2011, the annual surveys also showed a desire for more democracy and involvement in the process of government. However, after the anarchy of 2011 and the subsequent years, this aspiration for democracy was replaced by a desire for stability. This was natural enough, given the civil wars that descended on an ever-increasing number of Arab states, but it does not necessarily indicate that young people’s desire for more involvement in government has faded entirely. Rather, the circumstances make such hope impractical, which is why the survey shows a focus on stability.
Unemployment
One of the headline findings in this year’s survey was that young Arabs considered both unemployment and Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) to be equally the biggest threats to the Arab world. This startling juxtaposition of the underlying mega trend of unemployment and the immediate threat of terror and anarchy seems odd, as both equally scored 35 per cent as the “biggest obstacle facing the Middle East”. But this simple number reflects that young Arabs have already begun to factor in the territorial defeat of Dash despite the war continuing in Iraq and Syria. Sixty one per cent thought that Daesh had become weaker in the past year and only 31 per cent thought it had become stronger. This view was strongest in Iraq, where 81 per cent saw Daesh as weakening.
The juxtaposition also reflects young Arabs’ overwhelming concern over employment and jobs as they are in the middle of the region’s major crisis of hundreds of millions of young Arabs growing up and entering a job market that is not expanding and therefore leaving the young people unemployed and frustrated. This was supported by a further question that found young people to consider education and jobs to be just as important as military action in defeating Daesh and the other terrorists that plague the Arab world. Both military action and educational reform scored 13 per cent as the highest priority in fighting Daesh, followed by creating more well-paying jobs (with 12 per cent), and informing the public that Daesh has nothing to do with Islam (12 per cent) and reforming religious institutions to fight extremist ideology (11 per cent).
Trump
Looking beyond the region, 64 per cent of young Arabs were concerned, angry or scared about Donald Trump’s presidency in the United States, compared to only 19 per cent who were excited or hopeful, despite his actions in bombing the Syrian air base and supporting the Arab coalition in Yemen. Trump is viewed as the least popular US president this century, with 83 per cent of young Arabs considering him unfavourably, compared to 77 per cent for George W. Bush and 52 per cent for Barack Obama. This perception probably helped push the US’ standing as an ally down from 25 per cent to 17 per cent, which helped Russia go up from 9 per cent to 21 per cent.
