Posted on 10/05/2001 7:55:02 PM PDT by blam
Campaign of abuse causes westerners to head for home
Stuart Millar
Saturday October 6, 2001
The Guardian
Western expatriates living in Saudi Arabia have become the targets of increasing abuse and harassment by militant local youths and the religious police as resentment against the west intensifies.
Britons who have returned from Saudi recently, and others still there, say they have been forced to adopt a siege mentality amid a growing street-level backlash against their presence in the kingdom.
One man who worked in the Saudi healthcare system until recently told the Guardian that almost all the expats he knows are making plans to get out.
The man, who asked not to be named, said: "A few of the hardcore are staying but the majority are ending their contracts and getting out of there.
"They can feel a great deal of anger and antagonism towards them, much more than normal. For their own safety, they have decided it's time to high-tail it."
Expats report almost daily incidences of abuse from local youths, who are, they claim, being filled with anti-western rhetoric in the mosques.
"There are lots of Saudis who are still warm towards the west," said the health worker. "But now there is another group, lots of young people who feel they are being exploited by the west and by their rulers."
Tensions have heightened since September 11. An airport worker still in Saudi said that for the first two weeks after the New York and Washington attacks, he and his friends were nervous about leaving their compounds.
"If you went out, you could feel the local kids looking at you and you were looking at them. The atmosphere was really weird."
The roots of the anti-western backlash go back much further than September 11, however. June Thomas returned to Britain in May after 18 years in the kingdom.
"When I arrived, life was fabulous," she said. "It was like that up to the Gulf crisis - they never call it a war - and then all the problems started."
The most disturbing development, according to Ms Thomas, has been the growing power and influence of the religious police, the mutaween, who are increasingly targeting western women.
"Women can be picked up for anything. If they were outside a shop waiting for it to open when the owner came back from prayers, they were mutaween bait.
"The mutaween accuse them of loitering to pick up a man, of being prostitutes. They are thrown straight in jail because they have no facilities in the police stations to question women."
For the last five years of her stay in Riyadh, Ms Thomas worked for hospital security as the "female investigator", a job which combined educating western women about Islamic laws and customs and representing women if they were in trouble with the authorities.
It was incidents she saw in this role which eventually led her to leave. On one occasion, a young nurse had just left her compound when a car passed with four young men who began screaming abuse at her. Then they threw a paper bag which hit her and burst, sending its contents on to her clothes and face. It was filled with semen.
The final straw for Ms Thomas was an incident in which three young women were thrown in jail for three days. They were strip-searched in a corridor, not permitted to make a phone call, and allowed to become dangerously dehydrated.
Their crime: they had been out for dinner in an empty Indian restaurant with three other nurses, and two of the group had bared their arms.
"The problem is not Islam or the ordinary Saudi people, it is the mutaween and the way they are building up the anger of the youth," said Ms Thomas. "I would discourage anybody from going to Saudi now. The time is not right."
Saudi is a gosh awful place and I would never ever go back.
Unfortunately, Americans overseas are very naive. They will stay until the bitter end in Saudi-- and then it will be too late.
I want them all (non citizens) out of our country, NOW. We are on the brink and we better start thinking like its "them or us".
Its not gonna be us.
Lets Roll
It has occurred to me that we need bases in the Middle East, and we're always accused of being imperialistic-- so, if we're going to do the time, so to speak, we might as well do the crime. Looks like Saudi Arabia might make a great first conquest. I'm not kidding.
At the very least we should just take Afghanistan and build some nice big, American bases there. We'll let the British actually run the government-- they have lots of experience with empire, and deep down, they like it.
Once the next 'wave' of attacks on American citizens, in America, are complete. The WILL to 'scorch' the earth will prevail. The M1A2 tanks will roll across these 'scumbags' as if they were a bunch of roaches.
LOL. Sounds good to me.
Has anyone on FR speculated that perhaps the Bush administration is WAITING for the inevitable second attack, knowing that THAT attack will create a mandate to do what is necessary?
Have you seen the videos of the Taliban walking along the streets beating the women? Burying pregnant women and generally whipping them to death in public? (These SOB'S don't deserve to live!)
As anxious as I am to see some butt kicked, that does seem to be the prudent thing to do, especially, when I keep hearing "100% certainty of an attack." I look to be suprised by the form of the attacks.
Yes, and Syria, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan.
Let's do 'em all at once and get back to worthwhile pursuits.
--Boris
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