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WASHINGTON
– There's a hopeful thread
to follow through the
tangled reform efforts for
the Arab world's sick
economies, where repressive
regimes and the yearning for
an Islamic alternative too
often lead to reactionary
violence.
It's
the Internet.
Our
expectations of the Internet
were way overblown in the
1990s. And saying the
Internet offers a way
through the stultifying
economies of
Egypt
or Syria
may seem like I'm still
drinking the dot-com
Kool-Aid.
But
consider this: Fewer Arabs
have access to the Internet
than any other people in the
world. There are fewer Arab
Web sites than there are in
any other part of the world.
Of the Arab population of
280 million, just 3.35
million people had Internet
access in 2001.
In
neighboring Israel, with a population of 5
million, there were 1.8
million people with access
to the Internet.
The
efficiencies of instant
information – in
inventories, research,
problem solving through
e-mail – just aren't
available to the vast
majority of Arabs. That
retards economic growth and
political speech in a part
of the world where both are
badly needed.
The
Arab intellectuals who wrote
last year's Arab Human
Development Report for the
United Nations cited this as
a key regional weakness.
They faulted the lack of
Arabic software, Arab
governments, the Arab League
itself, a lack of interest
by Arab banks and a dearth
of spending on education.
There
are more intriguing reasons
as well. The Internet is
both an amoral and an
apolitical place.
Fears
of online porn, al-Qaeda
radicalism and other types
of speech led Saudi Arabia
to require all Internet
traffic in the kingdom to
pass through Web filters at
the King
Abdul
Aziz
City
for Science and Technology.
Online
access via satellite, which
jumps over those filters, is
illegal.
The
Saudis are trying to
liberalize their economy,
however, and one of the
steps in that direction was
recognizing that mobile
phones were drawing vast
numbers of customers away
from the state telephone
company. Telecommunications
was opened to competition.
Local and long-distance
phone rates have fallen more
than 20 percent in the last
two years.
One
unintended consequence was
an upsurge in Saudi
subscribers to offshore
Internet service providers
in places such as Bahrain
and the United Arab Emirates
.
The
Saudi government is trying
to win back those customers
by cutting Internet service
fees by 25 percent.
The
Saudis are also trying to
take advantage of the
Internet to hold together
some of their fragile
customs. Saudi women are
banned from any workplace or
classroom where they may
come into contact with men.
Now, however, women can take
jobs or courses online.
Even
the Saudi religious police
see merit in the Internet.
They have put up several Web
sites admonishing Saudis to
behave properly.
As
a result of these
developments, Internet use
in Saudi Arabia
is growing rapidly.
There
were 350,000 Internet users
in the kingdom of 22 million
people in 2001. Now there
are 1.6 million.
The
Saudi Telecommunications Co.
estimates there are now 1.4
million personal computers
in the country.
Microsoft
Corp., Intel Corp. and
Hewlett-Packard Co. have
sensed opportunity in this
market. All three are
building manufacturing or
assembly plants in Saudi Arabia.
Where
information technology is in
its infancy, as in the Arab
world, it is a fast-acting
lubricant of business
efficiency. It is also
political oxygen.
This
article was originally
published on
July 21, 2003
by the The
Dallas Morning News.
REPRINTED
WITH PERMISSION OF THE DALLAS
MORNING NEWS.
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