Brownies and Kalashnikovs Page 12

  Almost immediately, the Palestinian employees’ organizational and social skills translated into Arab nationalist politics. Aramco’s hallowed image as educator and modernizer of the Saudi populace was one of the first to come under fire. One act of calculated social engineering by Aramco was uncovered by a Palestinian trainer, a university graduate, who discovered that less than one percent of the Saudis in industrial training in Aramco could read or write Arabic. The Saudi trainees were literate in English and illiterate in their mother tongue. American trainers had lifted westernized training programs directly from the American Defense machinery plants in the United States and had left them as they were. Since no Arabic was required in the United States, the American trainers concluded, no Arabic should be required in Aramco of Saudi Arabia. English was the language of oil in Aramco and they meant to keep it that way.

  Aramco’s American CEOs quickly noted that labor demands were becoming more organized with the increasing ratio of Palestinian to Saudi employees. The wide-reaching effect of the educated and politicized Palestinians on their less educated and as of yet unpolitical Saudi co-workers became most apparent in a massive strike for better labor conditions in 1950. Ibn Sa’ud realized that Aramco’s Arab labor was not going ‘gently into the night,’ and threatened to spill over into the rest of the country. Swiftly, he stepped in with damage control by publicly complaining to the American ambassador that “some of my people have been spoken to as no man should speak to a dog,” then adroitly delegated the sticky situation to his son, Crown Prince Sa’ud.9

  Ibn Sa’ud had more than labor unrest to face. US business interests were beginning to be tied to the recognition and support of Israel in the heart of the Middle East regardless of the Arabs that it displaced during the presidency of Harry S. Truman, a staunch supporter of Israel. Members of the Arab League, Syria, Iraq and Jordan, as well as his sons Sa’ud and Faysal, pressured Ibn Sa’ud to cut off oil production in reaction to the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the Jewish state. This Arab solidarity aroused US foreign policy fears, which were expressed by George McGhee (the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern, South Asian, and African Affairs at the time) in a speech he made to Congress:

  “At this time, the principal threat to the Middle East lies in the possibility of nationalist leaders moving to upset regimes which are relatively inept and corrupt, and not attuned to the modern world.”10

  For American interests and Aramco’s, Wahhabism was ‘just what the doctor ordered’: an Islamic-flavored totalitarian regime which would never be democratic enough to bother with headaches like parliaments, elections or trade unions.

  Springing into action to protect Aramco’s and Israel’s existence, the US government offered the Crown Prince a secret agreement in 1950. A fifty-fifty profits arrangement was offered with a lifetime stipend annually for every member of the royal family. From that day forward, one only had to be born an Al Sa’ud to automatically receive up to $270,000 dollars monthly with nothing expected in return. Today, this agreement has developed into a serious point of contention between Saudi subjects and the Al Sa’uds, as the burgeoning princeling mouths to feed has topped 12,000 and continues to rise. The United States’ fiscal support of the Al Sa’uds would come from taxes normally paid by expatriate oil companies to the US treasury. In the new arrangement, they would go directly to the royal family’s pockets, bypassing the Saudi treasury.

  Ibn Sa’ud’s oil revenues skyrocketed in 1949 from the annual 7.8 million barrels which had brought in $1.7 million in royalties in 1944 to 174 million barrels that brought in $50 million in revenue. A year later in 1950, the revenue increased to $111.7 million. The king did not reiterate his demands for better conditions for the Saudi laborers and deftly ignored the demands of his sons and the Arab League concerning oil cuts and Palestinian sovereignty by making sympathetic noises while straddling the fence as he had been bought to do.

  In 1951 the Cold War began and Saudi Arabia became the sole source of oil for the United States’ war in Korea after the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company was nationalized that year. The highly educated and highly politicized Palestinian influx was turning into a major irritant for Aramco as Pan-Arabism, anti-Israeli boycotts, and the concept of ‘Arab oil’ began to be bandied about, gaining more and more advocates. That’s when Aramco decided that the only way out of this worrying situation in terms of its American interests was to develop loyal, efficient, educated Saudi Arabs closely related (or better yet indebted) to the Aramco administration with goodwill towards the United States, before the inevitable nationalizing of the industry occurred. Thus they would ensure a smooth transition when the oil company was put in the hands of Americanized loyal Saudis who would continue to operate putting America’s interests first.

  The process of transferring the oil resources into Saudi hands needed to be carried out under an American public facade as a benevolent humanitarian power. Overnight, Aramco changed its policy that Saudis should only be trained as waiters, office boys and machine operators and closed down the al Jabal training school. Instead it began to offer scholarships for university degrees to those who did not have a history of agitation and striking, but who did have work performance, intelligence, flexibility, and above all, unquestioned service and loyalty. The social engineering necessary to maintain American hegemony over Saudi oil was set in motion. By 1980 when Aramco became one hundred percent Saudi, there were enough loyal and cooperative Saudis to safeguard America’s interests by keeping the oil production and export to Western outlets and interests functioning smoothly. There was a slight hitch when the scholarships for studies abroad backfired after a number of educated Saudi Arabs returned not only with technical knowledge of how to make the Saudi oil theirs but also with knowledge of their rights as hosts to foreign oil investments (such as Tariki and Mu’ammar). But as has been previously mentioned, that hitch was quickly taken care of.

  Two more strikes took place while my father was at the American University of Beirut in 1953 and in 1956. Again, Sa’ud Ibn Jiluwi, Emir of Hasa, was pivotal in breaking the strike of 1956 against Aramco by sending his security guards alongside Aramco representatives to search room by room in Saudi Camp for those Saudi employees on strike and loading them into trucks headed for Dammam jail. Strike leaders and other ‘troublemakers’ (the majority from occupied Palestine, Yemen, Iraq, Ethiopia and Hijaz) were rooted out, fired, and deported. Two hundred strikers were arrested. Three leaders were publicly beaten to death. A law was stipulated by royal decree and fatwa that strikes and labor demonstrations were strictly forbidden from that date forward. Strikes became a punishable offence and trade unions and political parties were banned using quotations from Wahhabi Shari’a that put dissent among Muslims as fitna (an act against Islam) and strikes were declared as fitna, as they created dissent among Muslim brothers.

  The US Counsel reported in a relieved statement that it was “abundantly clear that the firm hand of Emir Sa’ud Ibn Jiluwi was a key factor in the maintenance of order,” and anyone who might have been troubled by the amount of force used was reassured by the Emir that “the government knew best how to deal with its own people.”11 Thomas Barger, soon to be President of Aramco and credited with being the first to bring in the highest profits from Saudi oil to the United States, believed that the morale of the company’s long-time Saudi employees had risen to new heights as a result of the Government’s firm action against the agitators.

  ***

  Every lunch time, I waited anxiously for the siren to release me from my office duties so that I could slide into a corner of the library and feverishly compile my research. The librarian was new in Aramco. She approached me one afternoon to sit and chat, and asked offhandedly what I was researching “I’m researching the steps that were taken to produce this American outpost in the middle of the Arabian Peninsula through social engineering,” I babbled earnestly.

  A controversial silence, for the briefest of moments, ensued, then without losin
g her kindly smile, the librarian asked me, “So you’re not American?”

  “Oh, no,” I laughed completely unguarded, “I’m Saudi.”

  When I arrived the next day, I walked past the librarian with my usual cheery “hello” and was met by a wan smile and not so cheery rejoinder. “Maybe she’s not feeling well,” I thought, trying to shrug the chilliness off and walked over to my corner to study the dusty files in the back of the library. When I was ready to leave, I pulled out a book I needed to borrow for the day just as I had been doing since I started my research. The librarian who looked very uncomfortable, said, “I’m really sorry, but I’m afraid this book is not to be read by anyone except authorized personnel.”

  “Why now?” I asked in surprise.

  “I can’t explain” she answered touchily, “but we’re having a revamp of the books in here and I can’t allow you to take it home because it’s classified information.”

  “Okay,” I answered cheerfully, “I’ll just sit down here and read it.”

  She looked back at me, now all kindness gone from her eyes, “I was asked to not allow you access to any of the books here. Company regulation.”

  “So,” I sputtered as I finally understood her drift, “Hiding information from Saudi Arabs is one and the same with Saudi Arabia and Aramco,” and marched out seething with anger, unaware that yet more of this autocratic behavior from Aramco awaited me. I went home to a stonyfaced father waiting for me with a paper in his hands.

  “Why are you getting yourself and me in trouble with this notion of Aramco molding Saudi Arabia?” He just would not listen to anything I had to say in defense of what I was doing. “You are to meet the head of Government Relations tomorrow first thing in the morning. They are threatening to fire me for what you have been saying around Dhahran,” were his final livid words.

  The next morning, I walked fearfully into the office of the Aramco executive. I was young and nothing in my life so far had prepared me to defend my rights against angry grown men in high office.

  “You are not an Aramco employee, just a temporary summer student who is completely out of line; and the library is off limits for you. You accessed it by fooling the librarian into thinking you were an American full-time employee. I have nothing more to say to you except to watch your words. Your father never had such Communist leanings attributed to him.”

  “You Americans are here for the oil, not for us. You don’t want any democracy here,” I answered, struggling to keep the tears of hurt and anger from flowing. “Why shouldn’t I be allowed to read the information that you have in the Ad Building’s library?”

  Of course, none of the accusations being hurled at me were true, but I was unable to trust myself to withstand a minute more of his tirade and walked out for fear that my tears at this indignity would betray me. I arrived firmly at the conclusion that the Wahhabi ulema and the United States were two diligent bedfellows working in parallel with the same means of thought control to keep the Sa’ud in Saudi Arabia for identical end goals of power and wealth.

  Keeping the Faith

  The day after my run-in, I went to the hospital to have minor foot surgery done by Ja’afar, a Shi’a nurse from Qatif, a familiar and comfortable face. Still seething with indignation, I poured my frustrations out to him while he silently worked on my foot. Without looking up he began a whispered tirade against the Al Sa’ud family such that I had never heard from any living soul in Saudi Arabia. Keeping his head down he said, “It’s the Al Sa’uds who are to blame for this. They brought the Americans in to help them stay in power.” I barely dared to take a breath lest he should stop talking.

  “Faysal, the wonderful Faysal everyone is talking about and his progressiveness … he is the most dangerous of the lot. We the Shi’a still do not exist here in Saudi Arabia, so where’s the progressiveness and benevolence for the Saudi nation?”

  Now that I knew what Shiism was from my stay in Lebanon, I could understand his anguish.

  “We are Saudi and we have nothing,” he continued. How dare they label us in their official statements on Friday prayers that we the Shiites are non-Muslims? Are you aware that the Wahhabi judges, do not accept our testimony? That any marriages between Wahhabi Sunnis and Shiites are banned and what’s more, they have declared all Shi’a marriages illegal!”

  Ja’afar wasn’t finished; in fact he was just getting started. Saudi Arabia is full of religious beliefs other than those of the Wahhabis. There are the Twelver Shi’a, who share the beliefs and practices of the Shi’a of Iraq and Iran, there are Ismailis, a majority in the Najran area, and Zaydi Shi’a of Yemeni origin all over the Kingdom. And even those of you who are not Wahhabi, your Sunni sect, you people of the Hijaz, are not just one sect. There are Shafi’i, Maliki and Hanafi Sunni beside the Hanbali Sunnism of the Wahhabis.”

  Well that was quite a bit more detail than I was able to absorb, having only recently discovered that my religion did not just consist of Sunnis. Although King Faysal had removed many restrictions against the Saudi Shi’a in the 1960s that had enabled them to benefit from state educational and health services, it was a pitiful drop in a very large ocean. The basic lines of discrimination were very much still there, and would remain as long as the Sunni theologians in charge of Saudi Arabia remained Wahhabis, believing they would become ‘unclean’ just by shaking the hand of a Shi’a.

  Ja’afar, now well over the hour’s time limit for prepping my foot, continued speaking. There was no pause during which I could delicately ask him to complete the treatment yet not stop his impassioned list of grievances. I needed to hear them.

  “Look Fadia,” he said, emphatically looking up for the briefest of eye contact, “For any hope for this Kingdom to progress, the Shi’a must be officially acknowledged as a legitimate sect of Islam. How long can they pretend that 15 percent of their population in the richest province of Arabia doesn’t exist? We are not allowed to have our own call to prayer. Can you believe that? The books imposed by the Al Sa’uds and their Wahhabi ulema that my children must read and memorize are filled with vicious lies and slanderous claims against our sect such as, and I quote, “Shiism was invented by a Jew as a means of splitting Islam,” and rumors are spread that we practice horrible deeds such as incest and cannibalism in secret. Is it normal that there are no Shi’i army officers, ministers, governors, mayors, and ambassadors in this kingdom? But I think you have no idea of what I am telling you because you grew up here. The Americans of Aramco know everything, but as long as we do our job and go back to our oasis, we’re none of their business, unless we become a threat to their precious oil … which will happen one day, mark my words.”

  The Shi’a of Saudi Arabia have long been known to Aramco. The more than 700 wells in Al Hasa account for 98 percent of the country’s oil production, while the Al Hasa Shi’a, who make up 10 percent of the Saudi population, remain locked in their mud huts. Ten years after our conversation, Ja’afar and his people in Qatif, emboldened by the Khomeini Revolution in Iran, would go out publicly in the streets in December, 1979 lashing their bodies with whips as martyrs to observe the tenth day of Ashura, the Shi’a period of mourning commemorating the death of Imam Hussein in the struggle for leadership of the Muslims. Violence erupted after the National Guardsmen interfered with the procession and the Shi’a continued to simmer until February, 1980 when they rose again in a bloody protest for civil rights breaking windows and burning tires. The National Guard mowed them down and a ring of tanks sealed off the Shi’a of Qatif from the rest of the country while they leveled the town. Qatif remained sealed off by the military with roadblocks for months afterwards, its fate hidden by the Saudi government’s effective censorship. The fate of Ja’afar, tied up as it was with the Shi’a uprising and the silence that descended upon them ever since, has remained unknown to us.

  ***

  One afternoon, I met one of the students from our group by the poolside where I usually went to grab a sandwich during my lunch break. Tall and lank
y with jet-black hair and dark expressive eyes, he kept everyone in stitches with his quick wit and barbed comments. Upon seeing me, he put aside his book and smiled as I took the sun chair next to his. Like other bona fide Saudis of my generation, he found my mix of Americanisms and blossoming Saudi nationalism amusing. We started to talk about our lives and how different the student setup was in Saudi Arabia from Beirut. Then he surprised me with a sadness I had not seen in our group meetings, where he was usually light hearted and full of banter. “Yes,” he told me, “We are having a renaissance, so to speak, in our country. How long will it last? Who knows? There are too many factors weighing in against us to reach the level of freedom that Lebanon now enjoys. The major drawback is the Americans; they’re the kingmakers here and they’re the king breakers. But, hold on,” he laughed at my crestfallen expression, “The door leading to personal freedom has opened a crack and maybe we can keep our foot in that door. Who knows? I’m going to make sure to use this chink in the armor as much as possible. We’re starting sessions in our university in Riyadh where we meet with our professors to discuss our and Saudi Arabia’s future. I feel that this will develop into a movement similar to the one you are experiencing in Beirut.”