With friends like Saudi Arabia, we don’t need enemies. Our relationship with the Saudis is one of convenience and contradiction. We need the Saudis to exercise their leadership with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to stabilize worldwide oil production. The Saudi ruling family depends on our technology and skilled technicians, as well as our military to give them security. Without Saudi Arabia’s role in OPEC, our American way of life would be impacted. Without our assistance, they are toast.
However, after years of kowtowing to the Saudis, we have sacrificed many of the principles that have defined this great nation of ours: religious freedom, due process of law, civil liberties and human rights. The biggest losers are American women and children trapped in Saudi Arabia, whose lives are considered cheap and expendable. The biggest winners are corrupt diplomats and government officials who are profiting from our wine, beer and alcohol. The ugly untold story in our relationship with Saudi Arabia is that we have put booze over babes.
Lt. Col. Tim Hunter spent his entire career working for the United States government in the counterintelligence branch of the military, in civil service and in the U.S. Foreign Service. However, nothing in his career from Germany to Indonesia prepared him for what he encountered in 1993 when he was put in charge of personnel and general services at our mission in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Hunter became aware that, every other month, a 40-foot cargo container of alcoholic beverages was shipped under diplomatic seal to the Jeddah port. Alcohol is forbidden in Saudi Arabia. Imagine Hunter’s surprise when he discovered his assistants were involved in dividing up the lucrative cargo among Saudi police, “special branch” security officials and corrupt U.S. personnel.
How much booze does a 40-foot cargo container hold? A lot more than was necessary to keep the 12 diplomats at the U.S. Mission, their families and occasional visiting dignitaries well fortified. Nearly all the “goods” were sold on the black market. Yet the chief-of-mission, and apparently those who had preceded him, were willing to look the other way. When it comes to this alcohol, our government has been willing to “push the envelope” in this strict Muslim country, but in matters of religion and basic human rights, we simply threw in the towel.
Islam is the state religion. The practice of any other faith is strictly forbidden. Yet, most of the foreign missions discretely allow visiting clergy to hold weekly services for their country’s citizen temporary residents in Saudi Arabia. Hunter was told that Christians were a “security risk” – and ordered to hide the fact that these services were being held from inquiring U.S. citizens who might join these congregations. If callers were persistent, he often directed them to other embassies of other nations.
However, the most disturbing aspect of Hunter’s job was turning a blind eye to the plight of trapped naive U.S. women who had married Saudis, only to discover they were captives once they arrived in Saudi Arabia. “They cannot leave without their husbands’ permission,” Hunter explains. “If their husbands have means, they may take other wives. Saudi women from prominent families have some power, but these American women are the lowest in the harem. They usually become servants to the other women, the whipping girls.”
Our country not only has turned its back on these women; it has turned its back on some of its youngest citizens. No one knows how many of our children illegally have been kidnapped by non-custodial Saudi fathers, but there are hundreds. Alia and Aisha al-Gheshayan (See “They Weren’t Home for Christmas“) are familiar names to many officials at the State Department and many members of Congress. They are the daughters of Pat Roush. They were born in the United States and were kidnapped from a Chicago suburb 16 years ago by her ex-husband, Khalid al-Gheshayan when they were three and seven. Pat founded the Center for Children’s Issues and has vowed to keep up the fight to free her daughters as long as she has breath.
Col. Hunter, like Pat Roush, could not stand by and keep silent. A few days after he reported the irregularities he discovered at our embassy in Jeddah to the Inspector General, he was ordered to return to the U.S. A State Department review panel ruled that he had not “absorbed the Foreign Service culture.” Hunter was not fired but, when he refused to resign, his building pass and diplomatic credentials were seized and he was told not to come back to his job. Col. Hunter could be considered lucky. He is without a job. Alia and Aisha are without a country.
Let’s curb the kangaroo court of anonymous sources
Tim Graham