Sir, Bill Emmott (Opinion, July 4) is not quite right to attribute the political stability in the oil-rich Gulf to “enough money to buy off dissent and keep the army happy”. The oil-rich Gulf is politically stable because its constituent states are not multi-religious, multi-ethnic or multi-tribal.
Take, for example, the United Arab Emirates. It consists of seven states — each one is based on one tribe to which most of its citizens belong. Since the same tribe also provides the political leadership, the state is perceived as legitimate by its citizens. Contrast this to the rest of the Arab states, which are considered illegitimate by the majority of their citizens because their ruling elite do not represent their legitimate national, communal, historical, tribal and religious desires.
If the West wants to bring about stability in the Muslim world, then instead of imposing unity from the top, as it is doing in Afghanistan and Libya, it should allow the break-up of its failed states into ethnically and tribally more homogeneous smaller states.
Randhir Singh Bains
Gants Hill, Essex