Saudi's economic cities under pressure to deliver

By Andrew Hammond

JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) - An hour's drive north of Jeddah on the Red Sea coast, 8,000 workers toil under the relentless summer sun building what Saudi Arabia hopes will be the key to its social and economic future.

If all goes to plan, the King Abdullah Economic City and three sister developments in Hail, Jizan and Medina will by at least 2020 be vibrant communities in a country with high unemployment and an over-reliance on oil.

Allowing women to drive cars and possibly permitting cinema houses, they may also add to the few bubbles of freedom in Saudi Arabia -- where suffocating gender restrictions have been eased in recent years, to the ire of many religious conservatives.

But while funds are plentiful -- the government says the plan has attracted $35 billion of investment from global players -- many forces including the religious establishment and tensions in nearby Iran and Iraq could hinder the process.

Saudi Arabia is a Sunni Islamic state where the Al Saud family rules in an alliance with clerics who are given control of courts, education, mosques and even a law enforcement agency to maintain their austere vision of Islamic law.

Authorities have tried to reduce some clerical influence since the September 11 attacks on U.S. cities in 2001 -- where 15 of the 19 Arabs who killed some 3,000 people were Saudis -- and the outbreak of al Qaeda campaign against the state in 2003.

In the "economic cities", many expect the clerics to be kept at a distance from social life, the workplace and education.

"Society has changed fundamentally and the measure of it is that the official fatwa (religious edict) of old no longer has the hold it had," said reformist cleric Abdelaziz al-Gasim.