Tag: Saudi Arabia

Saudi Religious Police Attacked by Girls

Saudi Religious Police Attacked by Girls:

Dammam, Asharq Al-Awsat – Members of Khobar’s Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice were the victims of an attack by two Saudi females, Asharq Al-Awsat can reveal.
According to the head of the commission in Khobar, two girls pepper sprayed members of the commission after they had tried to offer them advice.

Head of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in the Eastern province Dr. Mohamed bin Marshood al-Marshood, told Asharq Al Awsat that two of the Commission’s employees were verbally insulted and attacked by two inappropriately-dressed females, in the old market in Prince Bandar street, an area usually crowded with shoppers during the month of Ramadan.

According to Dr. Al-Marshood, the two commission members approached the girls in order to “politely” advise and guide them regarding their inappropriate clothing.

Consequently, the two girls started verbally abusing the commission members, which then lead to one of the girls pepper-spraying them in the face as the other girl filmed the incident on her mobile phone, while continuing to hurl insults at them.

The Eastern Province’s head of the commission also revealed that with the help of the police his two employees were able to control the situation.

The two females were then escorted to the police station where they apologized for the attack, were cautioned and then released.

Fantastic.

New campaign for right to drive in Saudi

Saudi Women Petition for Right to Drive:

DHAHRAN, Saudi Arabia, Sept. 23 — For the first time since a demonstration in 1990, a group of Saudi women is campaigning for the right to drive in this conservative kingdom, the only country in the world that prohibits female drivers.

After spreading the idea through text messages and e-mails, the group’s leaders said they collected more than 1,100 signatures online and at shopping malls for a petition sent to King Abdullah on Sunday.

Wajeha al-Huwaider of Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, co-founded a group urging that women be permitted to drive. The group sent King Abdullah a petition with more than 1,100 names.

“We don’t expect an answer right away,” said Wajeha al-Huwaider, 45, an education analyst who co-founded the group. “But we will not stop campaigning until we get the right to drive.”

Really, I don’t even see why the (mostly American) press bothered to cover tiny “democratic” improvements in Saudi political life when this retard-run country doesn’t even allow women to drive. Every time I am reminded of that ban I shudder at the thought that this is the most influential Arab country. If they have a lot of support, these women should give each other driving lessons and prepare for a wave of civil disobedience.

The siege of Mecca

I want this book. (You can get it from Amazon.)

Update: Looking through the book’s site linked above, there are PDF versions of declassified Western intelligence documents on the siege. Some interesting examples are this US embassy in Cairo report of how Mubarak, vice-president at the time, ordered al-Ahram to downplay news of the siege that was going to be on the top banner headline or how Hassan II sent his most vital aide at the time, Moulay Hafid Alaoui, to Jeddah with commandos from the Gendarmerie Royale to be put at King Khalid’s disposal. H2 was ready send several hundred more commandos, in the grand tradition of Moroccan brawn working for Saudi Arabia.

al-Saud family feud?

Saudi prince criticises monopoly of power at the heart of kingdom:

A prominent prince plans to form a political party in Saudi Arabia and invite jailed reformists to join. The rare call for reform from within the royal family is likely to anger the kingdom, which bans political parties.

Prince Talal bin Abdul-Aziz, a half-brother of King Abdullah and the father of Saudi Arabia’s richest private business tycoon, also criticised what he termed an alleged monopoly on Saudi power by one faction within the Saudi royal family.

Without wanting to be entirely dismissive of this “reformist” call for a new party, can we really take it really seriously if it’s just about one side of the al-Saud family (may they be cursed to eternal damnation!) not being very happy with the other? Hopefully this will at least destabilize the Saudi regime and it will then be too busy to ruin other countries.

To give him some credit, this princeling is asking for some positive developments:

Prince Talal pointed to neighbouring Gulf nations, such as Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman, which have already opened up their conservative political systems and held elections.

“Saudis are asking why these small countries have followed this direction and not us?” he said.

In the past, Prince Talal has called for an elected assembly to enact legislation, question officials and protect public wealth. In the interview, he also called on the kingdom’s powerful Wahhabi religious establishment to make changes. “We have signed international conventions on women’s rights and we should respect them,” he said.

The group of Saudi activists that Prince Talal cited have been in jail for months for advocating reform. The prince called them “prisoners of conscience, not criminals”.

Prince Talal also called for an independent Anglo-Saudi inquiry into claims that some Saudi royals received kickbacks from oil and arms deals. The US justice department is currently investigating a 1985 arms deal with BAE Systems.

The last of which is more than you can say for the United Kingdom, where not only Labour but the Tories seem quite happy to accept Tony Blair’s closure of the BAE investigation.

Keeping Alms for Jihad in US libraries

I have read about the Alms for Jihad affairs in Britain — and I would fully support the Association of Librarians of America in keeping the book available in the US, regardless of the quality of the book (which I have no idea about).

OIF is hearing from librarians who are wondering if they must comply with a request from British publisher Cambridge University Press to remove the book Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World from the shelves of their libraries.

Alms for Jihad is the subject of a British libel lawsuit brought by Saudi banker Khalid bin Mahfouz, who has filed several similar lawsuits to contest claims that the Saudi government has used Islamic charities to fund terrorism. Cambridge University Press chose to settle the suit rather than risk a large damage award at trial. Under the settlement, Cambridge University Press has agreed to pulp unsold copies and to ask libraries to return the book to the publisher or destroy the book. (See “Cambridge U. Press Agrees to Destroy Book on Terrorism in Response to Libel Claim” from the Chronicle of Higher Education.)

Critics claim that Mahfouz is attempting to silence critics by using British libel law. Unlike U.S. libel law, which recognizes First Amendment freedoms, and requires plaintiffs to prove statements about them are false, British law places the burden of proof on defendants, who must demonstrate the truth of their claims.

Someone should leak an electronic version of the book onto the internet.

State Department: Human trafficking report

Most of the Gulf countries have made it onto the Tier 3 list (those countries with the worst record in human trafficking, according to the report) of the State Department’s Trafficking in Persons Report 2007: Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. UAE is on the Tier 2 watch list.

So is Egypt. From the report:

Egypt is a transit country for women trafficked from Uzbekistan, Moldova, Ukraine, Russia, and other
Eastern European countries to Israel for the purpose of sexual exploitation, and may be a source for
children trafficked internally for commercial sexual exploitation and domestic servitude. Reports indicate
that some of Cairo’s estimated 1 million street children — both girls and boys — are exploited in
prostitution.

I’m surprised at this large number of street children in Cairo. Does anyone have other sources on this?

In addition, wealthy men from the Gulf reportedly travel to Egypt to purchase “temporary
marriages� with Egyptian women, including in some cases girls who are under age 18, often apparently as
a front for commercial sexual exploitation facilitated by the females’ parents and marriage brokers.

What I also heard is that Cairo’s chronically underfunded state-run orphanages are using this to make some extra money (or their employees).

The full report can be downloaded here.

Tony Blair, the dictators’ sharmouta

Tony Blair on the recent allegations that Saudi Prince Bandar pocketed a $2 billion commission on an arms deal with BAe:

“This investigation, if it had it gone ahead, would have involved the most serious allegations in investigations being made into the Saudi royal family,” Blair said at a meeting of the Group of Eight nations in Germany.

He added that, “My job is to give advice as to whether that is a sensible thing in circumstances where I don’t believe the investigation incidentally would have led anywhere except to the complete wreckage of a vital strategic relationship for our country. . . . Quite apart from the fact that we would have lost thousands, thousands of British jobs.”

This a week after Tony Blair heaps praise on the regime of Muammar Qadhafi in Libya as a major oil deal is signed with BP.

Corruption, the Arab world’s number one export. In fact when you think about it, between the Arabs’ petrodollars and the Israelis’ various mafias (diamonds, ecstasy, weapons, etc.), this region is probably the world’s nexus of sleaze.

Update: This story has more details on the Bandar-BAe-Blair scandal. And a note: sharmouta is Arabic slang for slut or whore.

The Central Boycott Office

This news is a couple of weeks old, but I found telling what German news magazine Der Spiegel discovered in attorney documents which are part of the file on the Siemens corruption scandal (which also extends to bribery in Saudi Arabia – see this excellent WS Journal article):

The documents suggest that a part of the €72mn which Siemens paid to a certain Mohiedden el Shatta was used to make sure that Siemens remained off the black list of the Central Boycott Office. This office which is Damascus-based but affiliated with the Arab League was founded in the 50s to organize the Arab world’s commercial boycott of Israel. Companies which are on the list face restrictions in doing business with Arab states.

Here is some background on the office from a paper published by MEMRI:

In other words, the Boycott Office has now become an instrument to fight globalization which threatens primarily the Syrian state-run command economy drowning under the weight of stifling regulations, pernicious corruption and a mafia-style political system. Syrian staff are the primary beneficiaries of the salaries advanced by the Arab League. If the CBO were abolished, many of these bureaucrats will be out of work or will be working as civil servants in the Syrian government at a fraction of their current salaries and benefits.

MEMRI has its agenda etc, but to me it looks like this thing still exists only to organize some extra baksheesh for Syria’s state-class, as the Der Spiegel article also claims:

“To be removed from the [boycott] list, Western companies allegedly paid millions.�

Bridging Sinai and Saudi Arabia

This is an interesting project:

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah will next week lay the foundation stone for a $1.5 billion bridge project that will link the Kingdom to neighbouring Egypt.

The bridge will link the Sinai region of Egypt, close to the Sharm el-Sheikh resort town, to the northwest of Saudi Arabia near Ras el-Sheikh Humayd.

Two bridges will be built to span the Gulf of Aqaba and Tiran Strait, with Tiran Island used as a halfway point for the 25 km crossing.

While I generally think that more infrastructure is badly needed to support inner-Arab trade, I actually don’t think this will immediately do much good to South Sinai’s economy, which is relatively well-off thanks to its tourism resorts. (It would be the North around El Arish that needs development.) This giant project is likely to destroy more of its precious coral riffs, and certainly means more trucks shipping goods from the Kingdom to Cairo, polluting the air and further damaging already bad roads.

There are also talks between Yemen and Djibouti, by the way, to connect their countries via a bridge as well. This one is planned to carry a railway connection, which definitely should have been contemplated in case of the Sinai bridge as well. But I guess ENR is too busy with repairing all its switches and electrifying its tracks.