Notice Americans had to train Saudi's at first

In 1973, forty years after American oil explorers first went ashore on Saudi Arabia's eastern coastline, the Saudi government began an incremental buy-out of the concession-holding Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco). The richest prize in oil industry history, the generator of billions of dollars for the four American oil companies that owned Aramco, was being relinquished -- without rancor or recriminations. In 1933, Saudi Arabia lacked indigenous skilled workers, had few schools and virtually no civil infrastructure. Within the lifetime of the 67-year-old Ali Naimi, who joined Aramco as a boy and is now the Kingdom's oil minister, the world's largest integrated oil company was totally in Saudi hands -- from the rig floor to top management. This is an account of human resource development, an evolving concession agreement, the character of the relationship between the Saudi Arab government and Aramco, and the on-going Saudi-American energy industry partnerships.


Saudi Arabs, Americans and Oil
By Robert L. Norberg

Human Resources

In 1949, when Harry Snyder was hired to head up the training of Saudi Arabs for Aramco, James Terry Duce, a company executive in New York, told him what was expected:
Your task at Aramco is to train Saudis as quickly and as soundly as possible to operate the Saudi oil industry. Inevitably, the Saudi Arab Government will eventually nationalize the industry. When that occurs, we want the young Saudis to have attained the proficiency that will enable them to operate the oil industry efficiently and with goodwill toward Aramco. Thus they will be serving their country's best interests and will be protecting the interests of our parent companies.1

This vision of the training mission and its ultimate result might have appeared reasonably attainable if recruits were available from local schools, knew a bit of English, and had some exposure to industrial practices. But those conditions did not exist when the concession agreement was signed in 1933, nor in 1949 as the postwar development of Saudi Arabia's petroleum resources gathered momentum. Tom Barger, a geologist who arrived in Arabia in 1937 and rose to board chairman before retiring in 1969, recalled many years later:
[One] aspect that impressed me was the enormous, inordinate poverty of the inhabitants. As I found out later, nearly everybody was hungry most of the time. . . . There's no education, obviously. The few people who could read and write largely had taught themselves. And there were some very learned men, as a matter of fact, among this population, although most of it was illiterate. They had practically no mechanical skills. We had new employees who couldn't get out of a room because they didn't know how to use a doorknob."2

B. C. Nelson, who served Aramco in employee relations for many years, recalled in 1965 what it had been like for Saudis recruited to Aramco in the early years of the enterprise:
Word spread to the desert and townspeople that in exchange for some physical effort the blue-eyed foreigners would give a man a handful of silver! And so they flocked to Aramco's budding oil centers . . . Imagine the effect on a recruit to be plunged into the mechanical age -- none of which fit in with his prior orientation or culture -- with little or nothing in his experience to help him adjust. The most amazing thing about these times in terms of one small facet of an Industrial Relations problem -- absenteeism-was not that, when they were handed their bag of money, they returned to their tribe with their glad tidings, but rather that they ever came back to work. Industrial discipline was practically unknown, so the amazing thing was that there was only a 75 percent turnover in the first few years.3

On-the-job training began on an informal basis in the 1930s and was soon complemented by rudimentary industrial training in classrooms. But without English, Arabic literacy, and basic arithmetic, there was a limit to the progress Saudis could make in job performance and advancement. In 1944, with operations revived after a wartime suspension, the Jabal (meaning "mountain" or "hill") School was opened in Dhahran.
Surely in 1944 no one expected history to remember the humble Jabal School. Yet the little company school endures as a symbol for development -- not for the development of an oil company, but for the development of a generation of very special young men. Many Saudis were introduced to the mystery of letters and numbers at the Jabal School. Among them were future scholars, successful businessmen and powerful executives.4

The Jabal School was the beginning of an ever-evolving, structured program of job-related training and general education that replicated under corporate auspices what an American might have experienced in public institutions, with grade school-junior high (company classrooms in-Kingdom), high school (assignments abroad, often Lebanon), and college (primarily in U.S. institutions).

One Jabal School pupil learned to type at 100 wpm and expressed an early aspiration to become Aramco's "first Saudi secretary." A Bedouin boy, he had been attracted to Aramco in the first place because of the opportunity for schooling, joining in 1947 at the age of 12. Not long after he returned from the U.S. in 1963 with two degrees, including a Stanford M.S. in geology, his name appeared in a lengthy Wall Street Journal article about Aramco. At the time only one Saudi had risen as high as department manager. Asked this time about his aspirations, the 30-year-old Ali Naimi replied, tongue-in-cheek, "Becoming the first Saudi president of Aramco." That was to transpire in 1984, and in 1995 he was named Saudi Arabia's Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources.

Naimi's Jabal School classmates, and many who followed later on increasingly sophisticated training and education tracks in modern facilities, began filling jobs at all levels of the company, gradually populating all of the supervisory and upper management positions in addition to drilling the wells, loading the ships, and manning the refinery and other plants, as they had been doing for many years. Throughout the process it was a matter of qualifying for positions, often an arduous, step-by-step progression, in a system of meritocracy.

In 1983 alone, a record half billion dollars was budgeted for training. In that year, 85 percent of all Saudi employees attended training classes, and the company was sponsoring 1,300 Saudis for university studies.

An Evolving Concession

Two provisions of the original 1933 concession agreement were never questioned or changed. One required the concessionaire to employ Saudi Arabs exclusively if they were qualified and available. The other said the company was not to interfere with administrative, political and religious affairs within Saudi Arabia.

But the terms of the original concession agreement between the Kingdom and Standard Oil Company of California were modified and amended for other reasons, mostly involving money and concession area, at the initiation of one or the other. The first alteration was a supplementary agreement signed in 1939 -- commercial quantities of oil had been discovered the preceding year -- that agreed to various additional payments to the government and extended the concession area to its maximum historic size, about 673,000 square miles, and lengthened the concession period from 60 to 66 years.

But by far the most important of the changes was the so-called 50-50 agreement, under which the company agreed to pay income taxes (the original agreement exempted the company from all taxes):
By this agreement [signed in 1950] the Saudi government's income from Aramco's operations came to be linked primarily not to the number of barrels produced and sold, as before, but rather to how much profit the company made. After 1950, therefore, the government showed increasing interest in the prices charged for oil, the cost of running the business, and the accounting methods used in determining these things . . . At the same time, as the government was increasingly successful in developing a group of technically trained oil experts in its Ministry of Petroleum, it also became more and more interested and involved with the actual operations of the company-such things as exploration programs [and] drilling practices . . . 5

By this time, the California Arabian Standard Oil Company (CASOC), the subsidiary to which the concession was assigned by SOCAL, had brought in three other American majors to what had been renamed in 1944 as the Arabian American Oil Company. The Texas Company (later Texaco) was the first, in 1937, with Standard Oil Company of New Jersey (later Exxon) and Socony-Vacuum (later Mobil) joining in 1948.

The keen interest that the Saudi government now had in how Aramco ran its business on a 50-50 basis was expressed in several ways. The company, at the government's request, moved its headquarters from New York to Dhahran in 1952. The government began auditing Aramco's books on a regular basis. And, in 1959, two Saudis were appointed to Aramco's board of directors.

The first sign that the concession was not going to live for its full 66-year period came in 1968, when Oil Minister Ahmed Zaki Yamani first raised the issue of Saudi "participation" in Aramco, whereby the Kingdom would buy into the company in increments, purchasing for itself rights to certain quantities of oil it would market on its own as well as becoming active in management decisions. The first 25 percent interest was acquired by Saudi Arabia in 1973.

At no time did the drive for Saudi ownership imply that something was broken and needed fixing, although increased pressure was now applied on Aramco to accelerate Saudi hiring and training, and for replacement of Americans with Saudis in top management positions.

Full 100 percent ownership of Aramco was reached in 1980, with beneficial financial effect from 1976. In part to reassure the work force that no drastic change was in store, the government did not displace Aramco with its own national oil company immediately -- waiting a full eight years. As symbolic reinforcement that past and present were being merged seamlessly, the government announced that the new entity created in 1988 was to retain the old acronym and be known as "Saudi Aramco." Now the Saudi company was to invite Americans to join its board of directors as the American company had done with Saudi appointments 30 years earlier. The Americans included Harold Haynes and James Kinnear, the retired heads of Chevron and Texaco respectively.

While during the course of the concession there were on occasion sharply divergent positions on the Aramco and Saudi government sides, few left permanent scars, and only once was it necessary to resort to outside arbitration (when Aramco resisted, successfully, the government's interference with the company's prerogative of determining whose tankers would carry oil exports: the Aristotle Onassis dispute). As former Oil Minister Yamani summed up the relationship: "In a closed room we sit down and quarrel, but finally we reach an agreement."6

Character of the Saudi-American Relationship

The fact that Aramco brought on its own redundancy by training and educating Saudis to eventually displace Americans and other nationals was the most important factor in a concession relationship that was generally amiable. Another factor was the nature of the communication between the two parties. Most routine contacts with the government's municipal, provincial and ministry offices were channeled through the company's Government Relations organization. This insured a uniform approach to presenting and resolving problems. Mutual confidence grew out of the Americans making "courtesy calls," when no pressing business issues were tabled, and by the fact that individual American "relations reps" and individual Saudi counterparts would deal with each other over a period of many years, sometimes rising in their respective hierarchies together.

In addition, Aramco found itself fulfilling the role of a quasi-governmental body in its areas of operations because Saudi Arabia, at least until the late 1950s, lacked the money, expertise and structure to implement and manage public works. By this time there was a dual tension at work. Aramco knew the immense magnitude of the oil reserves embraced by the concession and wanted to preserve its exclusive access to them. Saudi Arabia recognized that Aramco had the expertise and personnel on the ground to deliver infrastructure and services beyond what had been envisioned by either side in the concession agreement. Both sides played on advantage and need.

Pressured by the government and prodded by its Saudi employees, the company embarked on an expensive program to build -- and pay the operating costs for -- public schools in the Eastern Province in a number that would accommodate on an ongoing basis a pupil population equal to the number of children of the company's Saudi employees.

There were other of these "community citizenship" programs undertaken by Aramco in the early years, most of them undoubtedly in its self-interest, such as medical care for employees (and, later, their families); health education in surrounding towns and villages; malaria control; trachoma research; farming operations; loans and technical assistance to local contractors and industry; and support for public utility development.

The early Saudi workforce was made up to a large extent of Bedouins drawn off the desert by wages and opportunity, and in the early days they lived without their families in bachelor housing, which contributed to high turnover. To address this problem, the company introduced a home ownership program that, in addition to subsidized loans and free lots, involved creating housing developments complete with utility lines and streets.

Bonds between Americans and Saudis in general also grew over time, in large part because Aramco was a company in its own right, not a consortium made up of staff seconded from member companies for short terms of one to three years. For Americans hired up until the late 1970s, remaining on the payroll was virtually assured -- poor performance cases and cyclical cutbacks excepted -- and careers of 20 to 30 years in the Kingdom were common. Business decisions were no doubt influenced by this "home town" bias, since Aramco management in Dhahran would be more inclined than the shareholder companies in the U.S. to see the value of deploying capital into non-oil activities such as public school construction. Local management could lobby successfully for "good citizenship" expenditures by arguing that such investments prolonged a lucrative investment. On a personal level, friendships and family associations formed in this environment have lasted into retirement for Saudis, Americans and other nationalities, and there are Saudis and Americans in the company today whose parents and grandparents worked together in Aramco.

The Continuing Saudi-American Energy Industry Partnership

The Saudi-owned and run company is a far more complex and far-flung enterprise than the American-owned Aramco. Aramco explored for oil, drilled wells, processed oil and gas, then filled the oil and product tankers that arrived at its loading ports. Saudi Aramco retains all of those functions, while assuming responsibility for all crude oil, gas and product marketing internationally and domestically. Saudi Aramco bought or built 21 tankers through its Vela International Marine subsidiary and entered into joint venture refining-marketing operations in the U.S., Philippines, South Korea, and Greece.

Saudi Aramco maintains business relationships with all of the former "Aramco Four." Its first joint venture abroad (through its U.S. subsidiary Saudi Refining, Inc.) was in 1988 with Texaco in what was named Star Enterprise, which included refineries and a network of Texaco gasoline stations. (Later, Star gave way to Motiva, a partnership with Shell Oil Company, and Texaco was bought out as a consequence of federal regulations relating to the Texaco-Chevron merger.) Continuing associations with former Aramco shareholders include a joint venture refinery in Yanbu (originally with Mobil, now ExxonMobil), joint ventures for in-Kingdom lubricating oil production and distribution (originally Mobil, now ExxonMobil), and an on-shore concession agreement in the Saudi Arabia-Kuwait Neutral Zone (originally Texaco -- which had bought out Getty -- now ChevronTexaco).

In 1998, Crown Prince Abdullah invited bids on projects to develop the Kingdom's natural gas resources in what amounted to competition with state-owned Aramco, fracturing the long-held assumption in the industry that inviting international oil companies to return to upstream involvement was taboo. ExxonMobil has the lead role in a proposal for developing the South Ghawar Area, potentially a multi-billion dollar project if negotiations move forward successfully.

Conclusion

Much has been written about the sheer size of Saudi Arabia's oil industry, its 100-plus years of oil reserves, and the excess (and costly) oil production capacity that it can deploy to moderate price shocks, as demonstrated during the 1991 Gulf War. Yet the more compelling story is how these assets have come to be managed in such a brief span of time by a previously unindustrialized people.

The definitive study of human resource development across Saudi Arabia up until the mid-1980s was written by Joy Winkie Viola, who was Dean of the Office of International Affairs at Northeastern University when her book was published in 1986.7 In it, she quotes Oil Minister Yamani in his foreward to Aramco's 1982 Annual Report: "Relations between the government of Saudi Arabia and Aramco, like all complex associations, were not without their ups and downs, but wisdom and rationality have always dominated." The Minister went on to recount "the creation [by Aramco] of a Saudi staff who are pioneers in the understanding of the mysteries of the petroleum industry."

Viola went on to observe:
These are not the words of an embittered government, nor are they the angry charges of a government that sought to nationalize its natural resources without compensation to the company that developed them -- as has been the case in more than one developing nation. . . . . As many scholars have attested, the Aramco experience remains the one single collaborative effort and force that cemented the economic foundation of a new nation in the 1930s and vastly contributed to the "special relationship" that still exists between Saudi Arabia and the United States today.

Endnotes:
1. James Terry Duce speaking to Harry Snyder as recounted in Saudi Aramco and Its People: A History of Training, Aramco Services Company, 1998, p. 42.
2. The Mulligan Papers, Special Collections, Georgetown University Library, "Presentation on International Oil," speech by T.C. Barger, Shreveport, LA, April 1977.
3. Notes provided by B.C. Nelson to R. L. Norberg.
4. Saudi Aramco and Its People: A History of Training, p. 19.
5. Aramco and Its World, Arabian American Oil Company, Washington, D.C., 1980, p. 235.
6. Ibid.
7. Human Resource Development in Saudi Arabia: Multinationals and Saudization, International Human Resources Development Corporation, 137 Newbury Street, Boston, MA 02116. Also see Saudi Aramco and Its People: A History of Training, Aramco Services Company, Houston, Texas, 1998.


Chronology of American-Saudi Oil Industry Relationships

1933: Saudi government signs concession agreement with Standard Oil of California (later Chevron), which operates concession through new subsidiary, California-Arabian Standard Oil Company (CASOC).

1937: The Texas Company (later Texaco) joins CASOC as 50 per cent shareholder.

1944: Name changed to Arabian American Oil Company.

1948: Standard Oil Company of New Jersey (later Exxon) and Socony-Vacuum (later Mobil) join as shareholders. Each holds a one-third interest, except for Socony-Vacuum with 10 percent.

1973: Saudi government buys into the Aramco enterprise with first increment of 25 percent.

1980: Saudi government makes final payment for 100 percent of Aramco, with financial effect from 1976.

1988: Saudi National Oil Company created by Saudi government to succeed Aramco; new company to retain old acronym and go by "Saudi Aramco."

1988: Joint venture of Saudi Aramco (via U.S. subsidiary) and Texaco established as Star Enterprise.

1984: Texaco acquires Saudi concession (formerly held by Getty) in Saudi-Kuwait Partitioned Zone.

2001: American and European oil companies invited by Saudi Arabia to conceptualize and bid on an estimated $25-billion in natural gas development projects in the Kingdom. Exxon and Mobil (now one company, ExxonMobil) currently negotiating for project in South Ghawar.

The Top Five
Annual Oil Production
(millions of barrels daily)
1. Saudi Arabia 8,7681
2. United States 7,717
3. Russia 7,056
4. Iran 3,688
5. Mexico 3,560
Note 1. 11.8% of total world production

Proven Crude Oil Reserves
(billions of barrels)
1. Saudi Arabia 261.81
2. Iraq 112.5
3. United Arab Emirates 97.8
4. Kuwait 96.5
5. Iran 89.7
Note 1. One-quarter of total world proven reserves

*Source: BP Statistical Review of Energy, June 2002

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robert L. Norberg was employed by Aramco (later Saudi Aramco) from 1964-1995. His assignments in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, were in Public Affairs (1964-72) and Government Affairs (1972-85). He was transferred to Aramco's Washington, D.C. office in 1985, and retired as Director of that office in 1995.


© St. Petersburg Times
published July 21, 2002

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- A silvery shaft of glass and steel as tall as the Eiffel Tower, the new Kingdom Center soars high into the desert sky.

On the lower floors are offices and apartments, a Four Seasons hotel and a mall anchored by Saks Fifth Avenue. The upper half forks into two slim columns capped by an observation deck with nothing but open air in the middle.

Saudis have a dark joke about the place: The hole is there so a plane can fly through.

The Saudi government was quick to condemn the events of Sept. 11, when 19 hijackers crashed jets into another high-rise landmark, New York's World Trade Center, as well as the Pentagon and a remote Pennsylvania field.

It took far longer, though, for Saudis to admit that 15 of the hijackers were their own countrymen, recruited by a scion -- Osama bin Laden -- of one of Saudi Arabia's most prominent families. Now that they have accepted that, many Saudis see the hijackings as not just an attack against America but also against their country and its hugely profitable, if often problematic, relationship with the United States.

Saudi Arabia is America's biggest source of imported crude oil, supplying 10 percent of U.S. energy needs. And since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the kingdom has been host to thousands of U.S. troops stationed near Riyadh.

"The true victim of Sept. 11 in terms of politics is the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States," said Dr. Fahad Almubarak of the Shura Council, advisory body to Saudi's ruling family.

"There are extremists in Saudi Arabia who would like to see all U.S. bases out of here because they fear U.S. influence is going to jeopardize our independence. And there are organizations and countries that do not like Saudi positions. In this day, one could easily have many enemies."

Like many council members, Almubarak went to school in the United States (he has a doctorate from the University of Houston) and professes great fondness for Americans. Yet even Western-educated Saudis say U.S. support for Israel and its hard line toward the Palestinians has fomented extremism here and throughout the Arab world. At the same time, they accuse the U.S. media of fostering a one-dimensional view of Saudi Arabia, portraying it as little more than a breeding ground of Islamic fanatics.

In reality, Saudis insist, the attacks were the work of a few brainwashed young men whose actions in no way reflect mainstream Saudi thought or the tenets of Islam.

"The fact the hijackers had Saudi nationalities doesn't mean all Saudis are bad," said Prince Abdullah Bin Faisal, head of the country's investment authority. "It's like saying all Americans are bad because somebody goes out and kills school kids."

Still, Sept. 11 and the Saudi connections underscore the tensions in Saudi society -- tensions inevitable and disturbing in a key U.S. ally that is clearly struggling to reconcile Western-style progress with traditional Islamic values.

In many respects, Saudi Arabia has made remarkable strides since oil was discovered in 1938. Billions of dollars have been spent transforming mud-walled villages into modern cities with hospitals, universities, striking office towers and eight-lane highways. Walk through a food court -- McDonald's, KFC, Starbucks are big here -- and you might think you were in a U.S. mall.

But the clash between cultures can produce jarring inconsistencies. Store mannequins display sexy lingerie, yet the mutaween, or religious police, might lash a woman on the wrist for letting a strand of hair escape from under her veil. Satellite dishes bring in risque fare from all over the globe, yet Saudi Internet providers block the Web site of England's Middlesex Cricket Club because it has "sex" in the name.

Even some Saudis concede that efforts to shield society from Western "decadence," as many fundamentalists call it, is like trying to hold back the ocean with a sponge.

"We can't provide too much government protection -- it is up to me to teach my children what to watch and to create firewalls in their minds," said the Shura Council's Almubarak, who has five children age 9 to 18.

"It's not to the point where Saudi society is losing its values but it is a tough battle."

The tensions are exacerbated by a sobering reality: Saudi Arabia's boom days are behind it.

As oil revenues have dropped, Saudis have seen their per capita income plunge from $19,000 -- among the highest in the world -- to less than $8,000 in just 20 years. Saudis who once might have lived in big villas and driven gas-guzzling Lincolns are moving into apartments and buying fuel-efficient Nissans.

In scenes unthinkable two decades ago, dirty Saudi boys hawk bottled water at intersections in Jeddah, the second-largest city, and root through garbage bins in search of food. Yet just a few miles away, the Red Sea waterfront is lined with the enormous palaces of Crown Prince Abdullah, the acting Saudi ruler, and other members of the 30,000-strong Saudi royal family.

While the economic slump has widened the gap between rich and poor, fueling resentment of the royals, it has done little to reduce the high Saudi birth rate. More than 70 percent of Saudis are younger than 19 and millions of young Saudi men are entering the job market as the economy continues to weaken.

The competition for jobs is increasingly joined by Saudi women. They are graduating from college in record numbers, only to run up against the constraints of a conservative Islamic society that keeps men and women from working together anywhere but hospitals.

But in a country that tolerates only limited dissent, what complaints there are tend to focus on government policies rather than on religion. For better or worse, Saudis agree, Islam is what defines their country.

"Without Islam in Saudi Arabia you would not have Saudi Arabia," said Prince Sultan Bin Salman, head of the country's tourism commission. "Islam is the glue that holds Saudi Arabia together."
Eating behind a curtain

Saudi Arabia was the birthplace of the Prophet Mohammed and is home to the two holiest sites in Islam: Mecca and Medina. The modern kingdom was founded in 1932 by Abdul Aziz al-Saud, whose descendants wield absolute power today within the confines of Islamic law.

Geographically and culturally isolated for much of their history, Saudis cling to an interpretation of Islam -- Wahhabism -- that seems rigid and anachronistic to Westerners yet is tolerated to a surprising degree by even moderate Saudis.

That's why Saudi journalist Nada Al Fayez says she doesn't mind wearing an abaya, a long black robe, even though she often criticizes the country's treatment of women. The abaya meets the Islamic decree that women dress modestly in public.

"I must wear it. This is my religion and my roots," says Al Fayez, a 26-year-old who plays the stock market and writes an investment column. "For another Arab woman it might be easy to take off the abaya but I am a Saudi. It's like I'm carrying history in my heart."

To Saudis, few concepts are more alien than America's separation of church and state. Here, Islam permeates every facet of life:

The big Al-Azizia supermarkets throughout Riyadh are as well-stocked as their U.S. counterparts, with one notable exception. Because of the Muslim ban on pork, the meat counter has "turkey ham" and "beef ham."

Shoppers at Al-Azizia and other stores in the kingdom are careful to watch the clock. When prayer time comes -- as it does five times a day -- the lights are dimmed, the doors locked and the checkout counters closed. Anyone in line must wait 15 minutes before business resumes.

At the recent kickoff of the Jeddah summer tourism festival, an imam began the night's entertainment by reading passages from the Koran, the Muslim holy book.

That was followed by a laser show. Among the special effects: A huge laser version of the Koran, pages flipping open in time to a thumping beat.

And on Saudi Arabian Airlines, which boasts a modern fleet of Airbuses and Boeing 777s, a recorded voice repeats Allahu Akbar -- God is great -- as the plane taxis for takeoff.

The big TV screen in front of each cabin shows a compass pointing to Mecca so Muslim passengers will know which way to face at prayer time. At the back of the 777 is a space where up to nine people can spread their prayer rugs.

"And they can hold on to this bar if it gets turbulent," points out Faisal Al Sabyani, a veteran flight attendant. Saudi women cannot hold such jobs because it would require them to work with Saudi men; all the airline's female flight attendants are from Morocco or other Arab countries.

Indeed, the Saudi interpretation of Islam has produced what often seem to be parallel universes, one occupied by men, the other by women.

The Saudi American Bank, like most other banks in the kingdom, has separate ladies' branches. They are reached by separate entrances and staffed by women.

At Herfy's, a Saudi-owned chain of fast-food restaurants, the booths in the "family section" are curtained. That way women can eat without being seen by male customers.

When parents in Riyadh want to take their kids out for an evening of fun, the men might head to the kingdom's only ice skating rink. No women are allowed. But men can't go to the popular Women's Park, where mothers spread blankets on the grass and chat as the kids ride roller coasters and tilt-a-whirls.

Even marriage ceremonies, typically held in rented wedding halls, are segregated. The groom enjoys dinner with his male friends and relatives in one room, while the bride and her female guests dine and dance in another. The only time bride and groom get together is to pose for wedding pictures with the immediate family.

Saudi women have far fewer rights than men. They can't drive or travel abroad without a husband's permission. Daughters can inherit only half as much as sons, and a woman's testimony is given only half the weight of a man's in court.

Al Fayez, the journalist, is among the Saudi women who are starting to speak out. The Koran, she says, guarantees women equal rights and contains no ban on women working.

"The Prophet Mohammed was working for a woman in her business before he married her -- she was a businesswoman," Al Fayez said. "What we have here are policies and processes that must be changed -- there is nothing in Islam" that keeps women out of the workplace.

Al Fayez has publicly criticized the Ministry of Planning for hiring women only as clerks and translators and not having women in positions to help draft the country's five-year plan.

"We are an Islamic society in which men and women are segregated. How can men plan for women when they don't know what's happening in the women's sector?

"We must open positions and create jobs for women. The woman power in the kingdom is very high but we are not using it."
Saudi newspapers 'are more interesting'

In a culture like Saudi Arabia's, change comes slowly. But there are signs it is coming.

For the first time, women are allowed to have photo ID cards although they must get permission from a male family member.

Women who uncover their hair or faces in public are less likely these days to receive a disciplinary lash from the mutaween, the religious police. And men and women who aren't related have become a bit more relaxed about meeting for coffee, especially outside the "Bible Belt," as Saudis jokingly call their ultraconservative capital, Riyadh.

Saudi women also are moving into more occupations, including some that bring them into direct contact with men. Almubarak of the Shura Council said he was surprised, but not upset, when the female nutritionist he sought for advice shut the door to her office once he was inside.

"I thought maybe she would not want to do that," he said, because they weren't related. Almubarak, a financial consultant, said he also has "Saudi women calling me and trying to sell me investment products."

The 120-member Shura Council remains all male and no one expects that to change anytime soon. Yet it tries to get input from women in drafting legislation. When a Shura committee considered a retirement program for female workers, women were invited to give testimony, albeit from another room via closed circuit TV.

"Some say women are in our hearts and minds -- any time we think of an issue we always think of women," said Almubarak, whose wife is a professor at a women's university. "I think that's not enough. . . . I personally would like to see more participation of women at all levels of government. More participation will bring better balance, and the more they participate the more they will create opportunities for other women."

The experience in Saudi hospitals has shown that men and women can work comfortably together. Khulud Kadi, a 30-year-old woman who runs the Internet department at the King Fahad National Guard Hospital in Riyadh, has eight employees, half of them men.

Working relationships with the men are excellent, she says. "I have never been in a situation where I had a problem dealing with them even though some come from conservative families. I think people are getting used to the concept."

The gradual opening in society is reflected in a freer press. While Saudis in private often joke or grumble about members of the royal family, direct public criticism of Islam or the regime remains taboo. But Saudi papers are becoming bolder in attacking government policies on education, employment, health care and other matters.

"Suddenly Arabs are telling me they are reading Saudi newspapers because they're more interesting," said Reem Mohammed Al Faisal, a photographer and granddaughter of the late King Faisal.

When a fire in a girls' school in Mecca killed 15 students last March, Saudi papers blasted the religious establishment after witnesses claimed the mutaween had kept the girls from fleeing because they were not properly covered. And the disastrous World Cup performance of the Saudi soccer team -- it was shut out in all three matches -- prompted a wave of stories slamming the Youth Welfare Federation, headed by King Fahd's son, for not adequately preparing the team.

Among the most aggressive papers has been the English-language Arab News, which circulates throughout the kingdom. It has exposed a camp in which foreign workers were housed in 110-degree heat with no air conditioning, and revealed that a government hospital in Jeddah was so deeply in debt employees would get only 10 percent of their salaries.

Because it is based in Jeddah, the Arab News routinely reports on the declining quality of life in the city, a once-pleasant place now plagued by drugs, squalor and prostitution. A recent column bemoaned the city's "lost beauty and charm" and said government officials "must publicly admit their failure to do the job."

If criticism is based on accurate reporting, it is generally tolerated by authorities, said Khaled Al-Maeena, the paper's editor-in-chief. But there are limits. Al-Maeena's counterpart at another Saudi newspaper was canned after printing a poem that accused Islamic judges of being corrupt and obeying "tyrants."

Moderate Saudis see even the minor increase in press freedom as evidence society is maturing enough that Saudis can engage in constructive self-criticism. While the papers remain full of anti-Israel venom, there is even the occasional call for Arabs to examine their views and rhetoric.

In a recent column, for example, Reem Al Faisal castigated Muslims who rue that Hitler "didn't finish the job." Islam, she reminded readers, is a religion with a long history of peaceful co-existence with Jews.

The big question is whether Saudi society can continue on its moderating course, however glacial that might be.

"We are at a crossroads," says Al Faisal's brother, Amr, a Jeddah architect. "We either make the right decisions or we have a serious problem. This is why Sept. 11 was so bad -- it came at a crossroads. We are a society that relies on evolution and our evolution has been jarred and shocked by Sept. 11."

-- Susan Taylor Martin can be contacted at susan@sptimes.com.

American Woman Jailed in Saudi Arabia for Sitting With Men at Starbucks

Sharia Alert. A "venti" Sharia Alert, with an extra shot of tyranny, and hold the joy, freedom of movement, and free association. From Fox News:

A 37-year-old American businesswoman and married mother of three is seeking justice after she was thrown in jail by Saudi Arabia's religious police for sitting with a male colleague at a Starbucks coffee shop in Riyadh, according to a report in The Times of London on Thursday.

Yara, who does not want her last name published for fear of retribution, was bruised and crying when she was freed from a day in prison after she was strip-searched, threatened and forced to sign false confessions by the Kingdom's “Mutaween” police, The Times reported.

“Some men came up to us with very long beards and white dresses. They asked ‘Why are you here together?'. I explained about the power being out in our office. They got very angry and told me what I was doing was a great sin,” recalled Yara, who wears an abaya and headscarf, like most Saudi women.

The men were from Saudi Arabia's Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, a police force of several thousand men charged with enforcing dress codes, sex segregation and the observance of prayers.

Yara says she was interrogated, strip-searched and forced to sign and fingerprint a series of confessions pleading guilty to her “crime,” the Times reported.

Yara was visited yesterday by officials from the American Embassy, who promised they would file a report.

Posted by Marisol at February 7, 2008 10:51 AM

Think about issues like culture shock and oil as a primary resource and how that relates to why Americans are there.