1979 Qatif Uprising

Status of Shiites in Saudi Arabia Following the conquest and annexation of Al-Hasa and Qatif into the Emirate of Riyadh in 1913 by Ibn Saud, Shiites in the region experienced state oppression. Unlike most of Saudi Arabia, Qatif and much of the Eastern Province has a Shiite majority. Despite that, the region is of key importance to the Saudi government due to it possessing the bulk of Saudi oil reserves as well as the main Saudi refinery and export terminal of Ras Tanura, which is situated close to Qatif. with the region particularly lagging in respect to healthcare. When American jets landed in Dhahran King Abdulaziz Air Base for manoeuvres, the Shiites organized a massive demonstration. The demonstrators spent the evening of 11 November 1979 shouting slogans against the royal family and the Americans. In the ensuing violence many OIR members and supporters were arrested. The OIR itself claimed that 60 of its members died, 800 were wounded, and that 1,200 were arrested. Following the failed uprising Saffar, along with much of the leadership of the OIR, went into exile in Iran, along with Western Europe and North America. Within Iran, most of the exiles tended to congregate in Tehran, where the Saudis constituted the bulk of the students at the Hawza of the Imam of the Age. ==Events==

November 25 In August, Shiite community leaders in Qatif announced that they would publicly mourn the Day of Ashura, despite the fact that Shiite mourning events were banned. Despite government threats to disperse protests, on 25 November 4,000 Shiite in Safwa took to the streets to publicly mourn the Day of Ashura. November 28 Encouraged by the march in Safwa, protests spread to other parts of the Qatif area, and on the evening of 28 November thousands took to the streets of Saihat, close to Dammam. The Saudi National Guardsmen initially controlled the crowd through the use of clubs and electric prods, which angered the crowd and was met by protesters throwing stones and wielding bars and wooden canes as weapons, with some of the Shiites holding sharp weaponry. The National Guardsmen then opened fire with rubber bullets on the crowd, wounding, amongst others, the 19-year-old Hussein Mansur al-Qalaf. The protests largely dissipated after 3 December, when large Shia marches were held in Damman and Khobar. The bloody showdown between the armed forces and the Shiites had resulted in thousands of arrests, hundreds of injuries, and 24 deaths. The Saudi authorities were also busy at the time dealing with the concurrent seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca. ==Aftermath==

Government response In response to the protest movement, the Saudi government acknowledged the poor conditions in Qatif and increased local spending in order to both address these issues and in turn placate the protest movement, with the local administration of Qatif being granted an extra 700 million Saudi Riyals in early December for a new sewage network, alongside 39 million for a street improvement program and 3.25 million for an experiment farm in Qatif. The governor of Al-Hasa also announced an extra 1 billion in spending on various local projects. These projects were only part of a comprehensive plan launched by the Saudi government in order to develop the Qatif region, with other projects including new hospitals, schools, and a Real Estate Development Fund designed to help locals build new homes for themselves also being announced. The initial government response was largely successful, and Shia groups in the Qatif region largely abandoned the protest movement as well as the idea of challenging the Saudi state. However, the project's aim was to signal a real structural change in the Saudi government's attitudes towards Shiites in the Kingdom. ==See also==