Temptation Eyes

She's got something that moves my soul, and she knows I'd love to love her (The Grass Roots)

The Saudi religious police have proposed a new crime-prevention measure to clean up the streets of the Kingdom. Out of fear for the unpredictable effect of 'tempting' eyes on men, they would make some Saudi women cover their eyes when out in public. This would not apply to all Saudi women, reportedly, but only to the more flirtatious trollops.

Women with attractive eyes may be forced to cover them up under Saudi Arabia's latest repressive measure, it was reported yesterday.

The ultra-conservative Islamic state has said it has the right to stop women revealing 'tempting' eyes in public.

A spokesperson for Saudi Arabia's Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, Sheikh Motlab al Nabet, said a proposal to enshrine the measure in law has been tabled.

I don't know how the Religious Police propose to decide which women have "attractive eyes" and which don't. Would they rate attractiveness on a scale? Nasty hot, pretty, kinda cute, just okay, "I'd hit it," and so forth?   
 
Actually, those guys would never find any set of female eyes anything other than attractive and totally-out-of-control-provocative. I've seen the evidence first-hand, and can attest that Saudi men do indeed go a wee bit crazy over female eyes. 

Pin-up girls in a Saudi barracks

Scoff at them if you will, but is there any fundamental difference - fundamental, get it? - between the Kingdom's religious policemen and their secular counterparts in the modern Western nanny state? They want to ban the unsafe display of women's eyes, and New York's former Mayor Bloomberg actually did ban all manner of things that he deemed unsafe or imprudent.

They both do it for your own good. Which means they both feel perfectly justified, and neither will stop so long as they have power.

Bad Boys, Bad Boys, Whatchagonna Do When The Kingdom Comes For You?

H/T to Crossroads Arabia for posting news of this development.

[T]he Saudi government is going to establish its own bureau of Diplomatic Security, Saudi Gazette reports. The move seems to be setting up an office somewhat similar in its mission to that of the US State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service (DSS) in that it will protect missions and diplomats abroad as well as foreign missions within the Kingdom.

The Saudi Gazette story is linked in the Crossroads post, and it says:

The government is setting up a special security unit to protect Saudi ambassadors and diplomatic missions abroad. The unit will also be responsible for providing protection to foreign diplomatic missions in the Kingdom.

Teams of commandos, officers and non-commissioned officers will be trained specifically for the unit known as the “Special Forces for Diplomatic Security”.

It will fall under the Ministry of Interior, said Al-Hayat Arabic daily, quoting informed sources.

This new unit sounds similar to DSS in that it will protect Saudi Ambassadors and diplomatic missions abroad, however, I suspect its function might be limited to personal protection, i.e., bodyguard stuff, rather than encompassing the full range of security responsibilities. The fact that the unit will be located in the Ministry of Interior - the police and counterterrorism arm of the Kingdom - rather than in the Foreign Ministry, reinforces my assumption that this is more of a bodyguard and armed response force.

Of course, this being a Kingdom Of Saudi Arabia operation, the unit will lack for nothing in the way of hardware and resources:

Members of the unit will be armed with the latest sophisticated weapons.

They will be trained to protect diplomatic facilities and residences, and escort ambassadors on official business.

They will also have special training in anti-terrorism methods and air-borne exercises and drive special armored vehicles used to guard diplomats and missions.

With all that stuff, the Kingdom ought to field a totally kick-ass DSS equivalent unit. Not unlike the 2007 movie, only without a Jennifer Garner equivalent, I assume.

From Bombs to Crayons and Back Again

ABC News is reporting that former Gitmo detainees whom we released to Saudi Arabia in 2007 are believed to have been behind the Northwest Airlines Flight #253 bombing attempt (Former Guantanamo Prisoners Believed Behind Northwest Airlines Bomb Plot).

They quote an unidentified U.S. diplomat who is less than impressed with the Saudi's rehab program for former terrorists:

"The so-called rehabilitation programs are a joke," a U.S. diplomat said in describing the Saudi efforts with released Guantanamo detainees.

Saudi officials concede its program has had its "failures" but insist that, overall, the effort has helped return potential terrorists to a meaningful life.

One program gives the former detainees paints and crayons as part of the rehabilitation regimen.

Paints and crayons? That rings a bell. In 2007, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) aired a short documentary about the Saudi's art therapy program, featuring Canadian journalist Nancy Durham.



Predictably, art therapy is a Western export to Saudi Arabia. Dr. Awad Alyami, Director of Art Therapy at King Fahad Medical City and the main figure in the PBS story, studied art therapy at Pennsylvania State University.

Dr. Alyami learned about this innovative approach while studying in the United States.

Dr. Alyami: It’s not revolutionary a hundred percent because my colleagues in England, Canada, in the states … they’re doing some art in jail, but not with my type of population.

Nancy Durham: Yeah, this is what’s new. I mean these are guys who couldn’t have cared less about art … (garbled).

Dr. Alyami: Yes, Nancy do you think it was easy for me to start the program with them? No, I was scared to death to start with them. Really … because I had that idea that these are uh … criminals. They blow up buildings and stuff.

Indeed. Some of them still do blow stuff up. Nothing worse than an art therapy drop-out.

The sound is weak on the video clip, but you can read a transcript here.

Ex-Gitmo Detainee and Rehab Dropout Killed In Saudi Arabia

A Saudi radical and al Qaeda operative whom we released from Gitmo in 2007 was killed last week in a firefight with Saudi security forces, the Christian Science Monitor reported today:

Two Yemen-based militants dressed as women, one of whom was a former Guantánamo prisoner, were intercepted at a Saudi checkpoint last week.

-- snip --

The two fighters discovered last week, Rayed Abdullahi al-Harbi and Yousef Mohammed al-Shihri, were both on a Saudi government most-wanted list issued in February. Al Shihri is a former Guantanamo detainee, and the brother-in-law of Saeed al-Shihri, the Yemen-based deputy commander of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula who also was at Guantánamo, spokesman Turki said.

The Long War Journal provided some background on al Shahri:

One of the names on the Saudi most-wanted list that matches the list of Saudis repatriated from Guantánamo is Yousuf Mohammed Mubarak Al Jubairi Al Shahri. In the U.S. government's files, one of the repatriated detainee's names is given as Yussef Mohammed Mubarak al Shihri. Yussef allegedly traveled from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan using al Qaeda's Mashhad transit hub. Once in Afghanistan, he was allegedly trained at the notorious al Farouq camp and fought against the Northern Alliance. Yussef's brother is a "known al Qaeda operative."

If the Yussef Mohammed Mubarak al Shihri identified in the U.S. government's files is the same man who is now one of Saudi Arabia's most-wanted, it is no surprise that he returned to the fight. The U.S. government identified Yussef as a hardcore ideologue who "hates all Americans because they attack his religion." The U.S. government's unclassified files note: "Since Americans are his enemy, he will continue to fight them until he dies."

Yussef al Shihri was one of the "kids of Guantanamo" - teenage battlefield detainees who were held in a separate facility apart from the rest of the Gitmo Gang - and his case received quite a bit of sympathy from the usual quarters.

According to Saudi news accounts:

Al-Shiri was transferred from Guantánamo to Saudi Arabia in 2007. He was immediately put into the Ministry of Interior’s hugely successful rehabilitation program for arrested extremists.

Two years after entering the program, al Shihri had fled to Yemen where he reconnected with his al Qaeda associates, and last week he was sneaking back into the Kingdom bearing four suicide bomb vests when he was intercepted.

That "hugely successful rehabilitation program" still has some kinks to work out, obviously. Perhaps now the Obama administration will have seconds thought about trying to palm off our Yemeni detainees on the Kingdom.

Will Saudi Arabia Become the New Gitmo?

The administration continues to make progress, of a sort, on its commitment to close Gitmo. They have now resorted to begging the government of Saudi Arabia to accept our Yemeni detainees, who are the most problematic of the Gitmo Gang, into Saudi Arabia's deradicalization program. Good try, but it doesn't look like the Saudis will agree.

From today's Washington Post:

The [Saudi's success at the] rehabilitation of militants ... has convinced the Obama administration that Saudi Arabia is the ideal place to send dozens of Yemenis being held at Guantanamo.

-- snip --

As President Obama's promised January deadline to close Guantanamo approaches, the fate of 97 Yemenis remains the administration's biggest obstacle to closing the facility and forging a new detention policy. They are the largest community left at Guantanamo, roughly half of the prisoners who remain there, and are viewed as among the most radicalized, with deep jihadist roots inside Yemen, Osama bin Laden's ancestral homeland.

-- snip --

Publicly, Saudi officials have said they will accept the Yemenis only if they come willingly. Privately, Saudi officials interviewed here say they would like to find a different solution. If Saudi Arabia were to accept the Yemenis -- a decision that most observers say will require the blessing of King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz -- it risks becoming a greater al-Qaeda target. The kingdom also has close ties to Yemen's government, which would probably consider the detainees' transfer to Saudi Arabia a public embarrassment. Yemen has publicly declared that it wants its detainees to return home.

If the Yemenis participated and then rejoined al-Qaeda, it would be a severe blow to the program as well as to the kingdom's pride.

"It's a no-win situation for the Saudis. They can't rehabilitate these guys, and they don't want to become America's jailor," said Christopher Boucek, an analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who has studied the rehabilitation program.

Apparently, the Saudi deradicalization program depends upon a kind of social surveillance that wouldn't be available in the case of foreigners like Yemenis.

Saudi officials say their success with former [Gitmo] detainees such as [Khalid al] Jehani lies in members of his family and tribe, who keep constant watch over him, and cannot be duplicated with those whose social networks and roots lie outside Saudi Arabia.

"If I try to do something bad, my family will tell the government about me," said Jehani, who joined a radical Islamist movement in the Philippines and trained al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan. "How can you trust that will happen with a family living in Yemen?"

How, indeed?

Jehani is echoing - unconsciously, I'm sure - the Victorian English politician J. A. Roebuck, who memorably nailed that same point when he argued in the parliamentary debates on the Second Reform Act of 1867, "if a man has a settled house, in which he has lived with his family for a number of years, you have a man who has given hostages to the state, and you have in these circumstances a guarantee for that man’s virtue."

Without the guarantee that would be provided by such hostages, why should the Saudis agree to take any of our Yemenis off our hands?

Obama-Abdullah: Bodacious Bling-Bling But No News

The White House has released only a bland statement about President Obama's meeting today with Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah. His Majesty's presentation of the King Abdul Aziz Order of Merit is the only noteworthy thing I've seen so far, and that's just for the comedy value.

Saudi Pin-up Girl

While in Riyadh last week I had occasion to visit a barracks that was used by Saudi security forces. It was like any other barracks: spartan bedrooms with wall lockers, phone numbers to pizza delivery joints scribbled here and there, a mattress placed on the roof by some sunbather, and so on. A few pictures were taped to the walls, but I noticed the curious absence of any pin-ups of women.

Then I saw it. Photos cut out of a glossy magazine depicting lavishly made-up and sensuous female eyes. Nothing but eyes. Evidently, this is what Saudi soft-core looks like.

I'm Out of Here

My work here is done, and I'm looking forward to the 14-hour flight back home tonight, connecting from Kuwait City.

Here's my top travel tip for Riyadh: Mama Noura. Great Lebanese/Arab food in Riyadh's closest approximation of a deli. Fresh-squeezed juices, manakeesh, and shawarma with hummus and Tahini sauce. The embassy drivers clued me in. Trust them to know where to find the best casual shawarma place in town.

Quick Note From the Kingdom

So I'm in Riyadh, hanging out in the DQ (which is not the Dairy Queen, by the way) and dealing with a huge amount of sand in the air. It's clearing up a bit today, but the past few days there has been so much sand in the air it sometimes looked like a light brown fog.

TDY to the Magical Kingdom Next Week

Now and then I must leave my cubicle and travel. This time I'm heading out to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where I'll spend the next week or so hip-deep in Matters of Official Concern. As the saying goes: "what happens in the Kingdom, stays in the Kingdom." Or maybe that's Las Vegas. Someplace with lots of sand, anyway. Still, I'll find something to report back about.

The Kingdom is a quirky place, to say the least, but I've come to like it. Although I went there for the first time only fairly recently - in 2003 - I've visited often since then, as many as four times a year, and for up to a month at a time. Moreover, due to the nature of my business there, I've spent almost all of that time traveling about outside U.S. official premises and working with more-or-less average Saudis (average for those who work in the oil sector, anyway). The place and the people are starting to make sense to me by now.

While traveling, I like to read books that were written in and about the place I'm visiting. On my last trip to the Kingdom I re-read Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T.E. Lawrence's memoir of the Arab Revolt. This time, I'm still searching for an appropriate book. By sheer chance, the book up next in my normal reading rotation is A Monarchy Transformed. Even though it's about 17th century Britain, I won't take that one along lest the title be misinterpreted.

There's a New Sharif in Town

King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has shaken up the Kingdom's religious establishment by inter alia dismissing Sheikh Ibrahim al-Ghaith as chief of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, which controls the religious police, and replacing him with Sheikh Abdulaziz Al-Hamin (or "Abdul Aziz al-Humain" in al Jazeera's romanising of his name).

This was one of a series of personnel changes that King Abdullah has made in the last few days which just might indicate a reformist trend.