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Stardate
20020124.2055 (On Screen): I wrote a couple of days ago about one way that the US might manage to raise tensions in Iraq so as to start a conflict there. It's been pointed out by many blog-pundits that Saudi Arabia may ultimately be behind much of Islamic fundamentalism. Could we be trying to do the same there?
It is, for instance, interesting that most of the September hijackers were Saudis. The Kingdom is the source of reactionary Wahhabism, and the Sauds are financing its spread throughout the Islamic world via Saudi-financed madrasas. The government of Saudi Arabia is corrupt and incompetent, cruel and arrogant. A few thousand members of the royal family live in unbelievable comfort while the people of the nation have seen their average income drop by half in the last ten years due to mismanagement.
The government of Saudi Arabia has been much less than cooperative in the investigations following the attack, not to mention in our conduct of the war in Afghanistan. Many have been speculating that the Saud Royal Family are a luxury that the United States can no longer afford, and that it is time for them to go.
How, then, to sour relations between the countries? Perhaps we're seeing the beginning of it now. Until just recently, off-duty American soldiers who were female were required to wear the abaya, which is not quite as bad as the burqa but nearly so. (The eyes are uncovered; that's about the only difference.) They were forbidden from driving, or from sitting in the front seat of vehicles.
Lt. Col Martha McSally has returned from a tour of duty in Saudi Arabia and was subjected to those limits, and has filed suit against the government claiming that those requirements on female soldiers are discriminatory. I wrote about that in December. At that time I said that I thought she was out of line, and I speculated that her suit would be dismissed. Participants in my discussion forum (usually smarter than I am) pointed out that this might actually be a case of the government letting itself be forced by a lawsuit to do something it actually wanted anyway to do -- and that may well have been the case. Last week the military relaxed that order. American women soldiers serving in Saudi Arabia are no longer required to abide by those restrictions when leaving the base, though they are being "strongly urged" to do so.
It's not clear whether female American soldiers have yet begun to move in Saudi society in western clothes (or fatigues), but the outrage has begun there. (Which is odd, because female American embassy staffers have never been bound by such restrictions and have always worn western clothes.)
A member of the Committee for the Preservation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, a government agency for enforcing Islamic law, said all women must wear the robe, or "abaya" in Arabic, irrespective of religion, nationality or profession.
"Committee for the Preservation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice"? That sounds really familiar, don't it?
It is in fact the exact same term (presumably translated from the same term in Arabic) used in news reports to refer to the Taliban thought police, who would beat children for flying kites, beat women for walking alone or showing any skin; beat men whose beards were not long enough -- and basically beat or torture anyone whose faces they didn't like. They were those who heaped the worst misery on the Afghan people; they were the religious zealots.
And our good friends (they tell us) the Saudi Arabians have their own version of same.
So perhaps this is the first step in trying to create a break with the Saudis. American women begin to walk around with bare heads and uncovered faces; the Saudi Islamists get scandalized, and this then forces the Saudi Government to get off the fence.
The Sauds have been trying to have it both ways. They try to tell us that they are our friends; we have no better friend in the mid-east. (With friends like this...) At the same time, they are trying to present themselves to Islam as defenders of the faith; supporters of Wahhabism; financial backers of the madrasas.
But if they have American women walking the streets of their nation in such scandalously unclothed state, then all their choices are bad.
If they formally permit it, they anger the Islamists. If they forbid it, they anger us. (It will not play well with the American "street".) And if they refuse to take a stand, they reveal themselves to be spineless -- and they anger everyone.
I hope it doesn't cost one of our servicewomen injury or death, assaulted by irate religious zealots. But if it does, that will be a politically significant event which will make a permanent change in our relationship with the Sauds.
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