Saudi Arabia:  A Relationship in Transition? 
by Hugh Renfro 

Editor's Note:

The Saudi-American Forum wishes to thank Mr. Renfro, a witness to historical events in the kingdom's development, for permission to share "Saudi Arabia: A Relationship in Transition?" with you.  He presented his firsthand view of a very complex subject -- including the history and sociopolitical issues that shape the relationship -- at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on June 10, 2003.

I have had a 50-year relationship with Saudi Arabia. I worked with the Saudis in the 1950s-60s, before major modernization, and in the 1970s-80s during the boom times when they rebuilt the nation. I worked with labor, business, the government, military, the Bedouins, and the Royal Family.

I have been concerned about the bad press the Saudis have had over the past year. Last December, a good Saudi friend called from Jeddah and said, "….Hugh, you have to help us. They're killing us in the press, and you know us better than most." And I do.

My first exposure to Saudi Arabia was the company's Arabic language school in Sidon, Lebanon. While there, we were given lectures on Saudi customs and mores and were taught Arabic phrases, which were to help us in our new jobs in Saudi Arabia. A few months later, I was tracking a Saudi petroleum dealer, who was smuggling fuel from the Jordan refinery. In the late afternoon, I was close to the village of Qariyat Al-Ulya and thought that a visit to the Emir's mejalis would give me a chance to practice my basic Arabic. It is customary for the men of the village to visit with the Emir in the early evening before the sundown prayer. I entered the quiet, dark sitting room and saw a number of men sitting on cushions with their backs against the wall having tea and coffee. I gave the usual greeting, "salaam alaykum" (peace be unto you), and from the dark room came the response, "wa alaykum is-salaam" (and upon you peace)." I sat next to an old fellow and listened to the conversation. After a bit, I screwed up my courage to try to converse with the group and turned to the fellow next to me and said something inane about the weather. He looked at me, chuckled and said, "al-matriga taaht is-sayyarah," which means, the hammer is under the car. This was the first phrase we were taught at the language school…so he knew where I was from.

The U.S. has had a close, strong relationship with Saudi Arabia for 70 years. The Saudis have supported the U.S. politically and in business for that long. Many in the U.S. attribute the Saudi government's public announcement that under no conditions would they participate in the war against Iraq and the recent withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Kingdom, as proof of a change in the U.S.-Saudi political relationship. In spite of their public statements, the Saudi government acquiesced to U.S. use of bases for the conduct of the war against Iraq. The eventual removal of U.S. troops from Saudi Arabia was both the Saudi and U.S. governments' plan dating back to 1992.

However, the perceived change was not entirely unfounded, as the Saudi government could no longer ignore the very strong views of a large percentage of its population. A public resentment of the U.S. government has grown over the years due to the American government's obvious bias in the Palestinian issue, which has gone 54 years without a solution. The mid-May terrorist attacks in Riyadh have stopped the drift and have substantially strengthened the Saudi and U.S. governments' resolve to continue maximum joint efforts to eradicate the terrorist threat.

The May bombings in Riyadh have given the public a focal point other than the Israeli-Palestinian issue. I am certain that much of the public will have a feeling of increased security from a closer Saudi-U.S. alliance and will gain a determination to keep a lunatic fringe from destroying their domestic tranquility.

The continuing Israeli-Palestinian problem is the core reason for anti-U.S. government sentiment in the Middle East. The war with Iraq added to these feelings. President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell know that a U.S.-led effort resulting in an equitable solution to the monumental problem is the key to regaining Middle East friendships, and they are therefore determined to succeed in brokering an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement and to achieve the establishment of a Palestinian homeland. This will be difficult for them to accomplish, not only because of some recalcitrant Palestinian and Israeli factions but due also to pro-Israeli staffers in both the State Department and the Administration and also the Israeli lobby exerting pressure on the Administration and Congress. I have followed the Palestinian-Israeli issue for 50 years and have been discouraged by the many attempted peace failures; however, I am somewhat optimistic for the first time in years, not because the climate for a settlement is ideal but due to the urgency for the U.S. Our future in the Middle East demands a settlement; the chips are down, and I believe that President Bush and Secretary Powell are equally up to the challenge.

The Road Map proposed by President Bush parallels Crown Prince Abdullah's peace plan presented at the Arab League meeting in Beirut, Lebanon in March 2002. Abdullah's plan calls for recognition of the State of Israel upon the successful completion of peace negotiations resulting in the formation of a Palestinian homeland. This was the first such statement by an Arab leader of the countries, which are technically still in a state of war with Israel. As important as the statement itself, is the fact that it was subscribed to by all of the heads of the Arab states.

Fighting Terror

That 15 of the 19 September 11 terrorists

were Saudis has changed much of our public's view of Saudi Arabia. The U.S. government understands the reasons for the preponderance of Saudis involved in this terrible act, as they have worked closely with the Saudi government on terrorism issues since 1996, after the terrorist bombing of the Khobar Towers in which 19 U.S. servicemembers died. A large part of the American public has vilified Saudi Arabia and Islam as they have little or no knowledge of events and conditions that led to the 9/11 tragedies.

A Palestinian political activist, Dr. Abdullah Azzam, a professor at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, radicalized a number of young Saudi students in the 1970s. Osama Bin Ladin was one of those students. Bin Ladin was further influenced by Ayman Al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian surgeon practicing in Jeddah. Zawahiri was involved with a number of outlawed activist organizations in Egypt and was the head of the Egyptian terrorist organization, Islamic Jihad. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 was a turning point for Bin Ladin. His long involvement in the war further radicalized him and led to the formation of his Al-Qa'ida organization. The Saudi government's decision to base U.S. troops in the Kingdom [Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm], the Holy Ground of Islam, pushed him over the edge and resulted in his jihad against both the U.S. and the Saudi governments.

Osama Bin Ladin was raised in a life of wealth and privilege. He is the 7th of 17 sons. I have known the family for more than 40 years, and Osama just doesn't fit the family mold. They are pro-U.S., very religious and well known for their charity. The family's father, Mohammed, built one of the largest construction companies in the Middle East. Some of the brothers were educated in the U.S., some in England. At the time of 9/11, there were 30 young Bin Ladins in U.S. schools. At the request of the Saudi government, the State Department rounded them up and flew them home for safety.

The Bin Ladin family has businesses in the U.S. and for many years were one of Caterpillar Company's best customers, to the extent that Caterpillar kept one of their tech reps full time on Bin Ladin job sites. I came to know the father quite well when he was building the country's first cross-country highway system. As an oil company employee, I met with him frequently to collect for fuels and lubricants. Sheikh Mohammed was Saudi Arabia's first private pilot. He flew his airplanes to job sites throughout the Middle East. Upon his death in an airplane accident at age 45, his eldest son, Salem, was recalled from school in England and took over the family business empire at age 22. Because of his youth and the importance of the huge Bin Ladin operation, the Saudi government assigned 3 referees to the Bin Ladin Company. After only two years, the government recognized Salem's genius for business and withdrew the oversight group. Salem was a close friend, an international businessman, a jet pilot with thousands of hours at the controls, and a very talented man with a serious interest in cutting-edge communications technology. In 1988, Salem was visiting his aviation company in San Antonio and was killed while flying an ultra-light aircraft. Bakr Bin Ladin is now the eldest of the brothers and head of this very talented group. In spite of disowning Osama, the family understandably continues to be traumatized.

The media has featured a number of undeserved allegations during the past year - that the Saudis are not cooperating with the U.S. in the war against terrorism, that they are soft on Al-Qa'ida, that the Royal Family is financing terrorists, and that they are not really our friends. Some unpublicized facts and a review of our history with Saudi Arabia will illustrate the fact that the Saudis are our ally, good friend and partner.

It isn't reasonable to entertain the accusation that the Royal Family is funding terrorists. Much has been made of the Saudi Ambassador's wife having given money to two Saudis in the U.S., who asked her for financial assistance and who later were said to have had contact with persons connected to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The Saudis are very well educated and are very independent thinkers. The Royal Family works hard to address the needs of their citizens and to maintain their position. With this analytical population, they are running for office constantly. It isn't sensible to think that they would self-destruct by knowingly funding the very terrorists whose aim it is to overthrow their government The Saudis have been actively pursuing extremist groups with terrorist potential for 25 years. In 1997, the U.S. and Saudi governments formed an anti-terrorism committee composed of law enforcement and intelligence specialists from both governments. They work together to track Al-Qa'ida and similar terrorist organizations, and their financial sources.

Since 9/11, the Saudi government has frozen $100 million in assets of Al-Qa'ida supporters, they have rolled-up Al-Qa'ida cells and have shut down Al-Qa'ida financial networks - one comprised of 50 shell companies operating in 24 countries. They have interrogated more than 2,800 suspects and have jailed 200. They have extradited suspects from other countries and have had Interpol arrest 200 Saudis for terrorist activities. With the cooperation of senior religious leaders, they have jailed immoderate Imams (Muslim preachers), who for political reasons have been preaching hate for the Americans and hate for the Jews. This is quite a step when one considers the fact that Saudi Arabia is a semi-theocracy. The Royal Family is the secular arm of the government, and the religious leaders are the judiciary. Together they govern the country under religious law, Shariah law.

Saudi Arabia's actions are not publicized. The Saudis are not media driven. Even when faced with allegations appearing in the news and featured on talk shows, they very seldom defend themselves, as by nature they are a very private people. As the King is the keeper of two of the holiest shrines of Islam, Mecca and Medina, every action the Saudi government takes is subject to the scrutiny of more than one billion Muslims worldwide.

Dawn of a Special Relationship

U.S.-Saudi friendship goes back 70 years. In 1933, Standard Oil Company of California negotiated an oil concession with King Abdul Aziz. Saudi Arabia was poor. It was the middle of the Great Depression. The Kingdom's only source of income were the fees charged the pilgrims making the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina. Because of the depression, the former stream of pilgrims was down to a trickle. In 1923, King Abdul Aziz had granted an oil concession to a Major Frank Holmes, representing a British consortium. The Al-Hasa, Eastern Province, concession price was 2,000 pounds annually, to be paid in gold. The group paid two years in advance, did no exploration work, and defaulted on further payments. The King cancelled their concession. In 1932, the King offered his oil to England. They thanked him for his consideration but replied that they had no interest.

The King wanted an interest-free loan of 100,000 pounds sterling against future oil royalties as a condition to granting the concession. The British Petroleum Company was competing against Standard of California for the concession, but as they already controlled the oil in Kuwait, Iraq, Qatar and the Trucial States, they were not interested in paying that much for an unproven situation in Saudi Arabia.

Negotiations dragged on for some time. Standard of California, then called CASOC (California Standard Oil Company) had found oil on Bahrain Island. They felt that the oil-bearing structure could extend into Eastern Saudi Arabia and so were seriously interested in the Saudi concession. CASOC finally negotiated a 60-year concession, made three interest-free loans over a period of five years, totaling 65,000 pounds, and agreed to an annual lease payment of 5,000 pounds. Royalty payments of four shillings per ton of crude oil produced were to begin when oil was discovered in commercial quantities.

The King wanted payment in gold. The U.S. had just gone off the gold standard, but the U.S. government approved payment in gold, and payment was made in U.S. gold coins. For years, gold coin oil payments were shipped to Arabia in small wooden kegs. In 1938, Standard of California found oil in commercial quantities at Jebal Id-Dhahran in Eastern Saudi Arabia. They did not have marketing organizations in Europe or Asia, but Texaco did, so they gave Texaco half the concession and formed the Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO). As the oil operation grew, requiring additional capital, they added Exxon and then Mobil oil as partners in ARAMCO.

In the 1940s and 1950s, the Saudis were paid 35 to 50 cents per barrel in oil royalties. As oil production levels were not high, they were still poor, and the Saudi government had to borrow against future oil royalties in order to run the government and their social programs. During those years, the four American companies, British Petroleum and Shell largely controlled world oil price, and they kept the price at about $2 per barrel for almost 20 years. This allowed the West to build an unheard of high standard of living based upon cheap oil. So, the Saudis paid their dues to the West a long time ago.

Building a Modern Society

At the start of the oil operation, the King notified the oil company that it could not recruit labor from the Western Province.  It was quite well developed from being the chief entry port for pilgrims, as well as for trade with East Africa and Europe, and Turkish influence for more than 100 years and British influence from the early 1900s. The oil company was also precluded from recruiting from the Central Province, as that was the seat of the government. They were asked to recruit from the Eastern Province, which was not well developed. There were two large towns in the East, mud brick and gypsum plaster and coral block and gypsum plaster, dating back to biblical times. There were no paved roads in the Eastern Province, and as a matter of fact, there were none in the Central Province either.

Some of the population lived in small agricultural communities, in oases. Many were Bedouins living in tent camps with their flocks of camels and goats. The oil company needed an educated work force and so built schools. The Saudi employees were the basic work force. They did the manual labor, drove the trucks, gauged the storage tanks, and twisted the valves. They worked four hours per day, went to school for four hours and were paid for eight hours. American supervisors checked report cards each two weeks. An employee falling behind in a subject was given special tutoring. If he couldn't improve his grade, he had to work eight hours each day and go to school on his own time, until he could bring his grade up. Exceptional students were sent on to prep schools and colleges. ARAMCO educated some 30,000 Saudi employees through elementary school and on into high school over a period of approximately 20 years.

In the1950s, modern buildings began replacing the largely adobe construction in the principal cities of the Kingdom. In late1953, King Saud instructed the Mayor of Riyadh to begin building a new capitol. At that time the capital city, Riyadh, was a large adobe community of some 300,000 people.

On the evening of the day the Mayor, Fahad Al-Faisal Al-Farhan, received this instruction; he was at home in the center of the city. It was raining and cold. Mud was ankle deep. I went to visit him as I had heard that he was sick with a bad cold. We had tea while he explained his dilemma - how to start and where was the money coming from? We sat on the floor with a large blueprint map of the city and with a red pencil I drew two lines from East to West and North to South, intersecting the market place, the center of the city. I explained that these roads would have to be built to open up the city and that if he began work on them right away, the King would know that he was doing something. I gave him the address of the Bechtel Corporation in San Francisco and told him to contact them right away and that they would help him plan the new city. He was most appreciative and said that he would name one of the roads for me, but no Riyadh maps show a Renfro Boulevard.

Two days later, I went to the vegetable market in the center of town and saw bulldozers tearing down mud buildings. I went to see the Mayor and asked what was happening. He said that I had advised him to begin the new road system right away and that it had been good advice as the King was pleased with the activity.

This was a period of Egyptian influence. Gamal Abdul Nasser and General Nagib of Egypt were attempting to form the United Arab Republic, headed by Egypt. Gamal Abdul Nasser envisioned himself as the Arab "Messiah." Egyptians largely staffed all of the Saudi government ministries. The Egyptian army was training the Saudi army. Gamal Abdul Nasser's picture was prominent in Saudi police stations, army barracks and in government offices. He was extremely popular with the people. Nasser and Nagib visited the Kingdom frequently. On one of the visits, I went to the airport to check on a pump problem I was having with the aircraft refueling system. As I walked across the ramp, the King's secretary, Abdullah Blqair called to me. He was standing by an Egyptian army plane with two fellows dressed in tweed sport coats and slacks. He introduced me to them, and I went on about my business. That evening, I went to the palace for dinner and told the King's secretary that I had been preoccupied when he introduced the two fellows at the airport, and I asked their names….Gamal Abdul Nasser and General Nagib! They were big fellows with large smiles and hearty handshakes. It was easy to see why they were so popular.

It became apparent to the King and his advisors that Nasser had serious designs on Saudi Arabia. During Nasser's last state visit to Saudi Arabia, King Saud and Nasser were visiting the major cities. I flew to Dhahran ahead of the King's plane and was standing on the tarmac with a thousand or more people as the King's plane arrived. When the King stepped out of the plane, the crowd clapped politely. When Nasser stepped out, the crowd went wild. You could see the alarm on the King's face. So, almost overnight all Egyptians were repatriated. This was a close call for Saudi Arabia.

As a result, Nasser was angry with King Saud. He supported Northern Yemen in the border clashes with Saudi Arabia. The Egyptian air force flew a few bombing missions and two purported gas attacks into the Nejran in South-Western Arabia.

The U.S. thought that this was a good time for a show of U.S. support for Saudi Arabia and planned to fly late model fighter-bombers to Dhahran, Riyadh and Jeddah. The U.S. Embassy notified the Saudi government of the visits and distributed flyers in Jeddah, but the word didn't get out to the public in Riyadh. Gamal Abdul Nasser's intelligence was pretty good, as the night before the U.S. Air force visit to Riyadh, in his nightly radio broadcast, Nasser warned the people of Riyadh to stay away from government buildings and the airport as Egypt would bomb Riyadh the next day. The next morning, U.S. jets buzzed the capital, rattling windows and creating panic in town. Everyone was sure that Egypt was bombing the capital.

By 1960, oil production levels were climbing and the government began sending hundreds of students to the U.S. and England. The increased income allowed them to begin modernizing the country. Schools, hospitals and new road systems were built.

The year 1961 was a banner year for Saudi Arabia. The Saudi oil minister, Abdullah Tariki, and his lawyer, Frank Hendrix, presented a paper at the World Oil Congress in Cairo stating that regardless of existing agreements, a nation had the right to control its own natural resources. That same year, ARAMCO began turning back large tracts of oil concession area, and the Saudi government began paying ARAMCO for the associated capital improvements.

Hendrix was an American lawyer formerly with Exxon in Venezuela. He was our neighbor in Jeddah. After the paper, Frank was a pariah to the ARAMCO community. About one month after the oil congress, Frank called and said that he and his wife Betty felt as if they had been in jail the past month and asked if they could come to the movie in the ARAMCO compound. We were one of the few groups with access to movies, and we showed them at night, out-of-doors on the company tennis court. Frank suggested that they might come in our back gate after the movie began. That worked, but when the lights went on, if looks could kill …….!

King Saud issued a Royal Decree in 1960 establishing formal education for women. Religious fundamentalist groups tried their best to shut down the new schools  but King Saud and Crown Prince Faisal persisted, and women's education was there to stay.

Saudi Arabia formed OPEC with Venezuela in 1961. Venezuela's oil minister, Alfonso Perez, was in Jeddah on the Red Sea, meeting with his Saudi counterpart. ARAMCO radioed me and asked me to invite Perez to dinner. I did, and his last meeting with the Saudi oil minister ended early. Minister Perez arrived at our home at three in the afternoon. My wife and I were painting the bathroom, and so Alfonso sat on the stool and had a couple of drinks before dinner. We explained that we were leaving the following week for vacation in the West Indies, where we were going to build a small cabin on a piece of land we owned on the island of St. Lucia. As we would be in the neighborhood, he invited us to be his houseguests in Caracas.

The day before we left, the Saudi oil minister, Abdullah Tariki, a University of Texas graduate, called and said that Alfonso Perez collected old cameras and that he had found a very old Brownie and would we take it to Perez with some papers he needed to send. We arrived in New York in a snowstorm. Our flights had been cancelled. So, I called Perez in Caracas and explained we wouldn't be staying with him and would he have someone meet our plane, as Abdullah Tariki had sent a present and some papers for him. He met our plane, and 20 years later, I was having dinner with the then retired Saudi oil minister, and he said, "…..Hugh, if your company had known what was in those papers you took to Caracas, they would have fired you. Those were the formation papers for OPEC!"

In the early 1970s, with oil income escalating, the Saudi government prepared a new development plan. A number of U.S. groups helped with the project - CitiBank, Stanford Research, Ford Foundation, and Bechtel. The plan incorporated new roads, water projects, medical facilities, industrialization, and social programs. By 1975, the plan was taking off. The country was awash with foreign contractors. It was my observation that in their haste, the Saudis were paying $2 for every dollar's worth of progress. I met with Ghazi Ghosaibi, the Minister of Industry, who was responsible for a large share of the plan. I explained my concern and suggested they slow down, get their money's worth and put their surplus cash into U.S. government bonds at 10%. He said that it was important to get all accomplished while their oil income was high, and that "time is money". 

By 1983, the entire development plan was completed. They had built super-highway systems, schools, including colleges and universities, state-of-the-art hospitals, large water desalination plants on both coasts with large diameter pipelines delivering water to communities hundreds of miles inland, and two large industrial centers, one on each coast. The major industrial projects in these centers were each in the billion-dollar range. These were joint ventures with the Saudi government. Many of the foreign participants were U.S. firms. The government financed one-half of the foreign participants' share of the initial capitalization of these large projects, plus the first year's operating and marketing costs. These were generally 10-year loans at 2% interest. As a result, they built steel mills, refineries, industrial gas plants, and chemical works. Private Saudi groups built large numbers of down-stream industries. Due to this industrialization, today, Saudi Arabia is the largest exporter in the Middle East, and oil is only 35% of its GDP. The social programs were outstanding - free education through university, free medical care and the home loan program was marvelous! If a homebuyer paid his mortgage payments on time for a year or two, the government excused the balance of the debt.

I met again with the Minister of Industry to congratulate him on a great job. He reminded me of our talk a few years before at which time he told me that time is money. He said, "We have just finished every project, have just now run out of cash and are entering a period of deficits." This very talented man holds a PhD from the University of Southern California.

During this dynamic period, Saudi graduates of U.S. universities, mainly West Coast - Stanford, Berkeley Cal, UCLA, USC, and Arizona State - headed most of the Saudi government bureaus. These talented men are products of the Saudi government's education program. So much for the belief held by much of our public that the Saudis had wasted their money. They built a new nation!

Strengths and Strains in the Relationship

During the long U.S.-Saudi friendship, I recall at least two occasions when the U.S. economy was in trouble. The U.S. government went to the Saudis for help. Both times, the Saudis were in a strong cash position and invested hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. government bonds. They bailed us out. They have always purchased our commercial aircraft and our arms…and they pay for them, unlike some countries, which get massive amounts of our foreign aid and never have to repay a penny.

Saudi Arabia has been the moderate in OPEC, holding the price line against countries pushing for unreasonable price hikes.

In the 1980s, petroleum economists were talking about diminishing world oil supply with only 13 years of known reserves remaining. They were predicting a $50 per barrel price. In 1990, I met with the Deputy Minister of Petroleum, Abdul Aziz Turki. He had heard about a talk I had given in San Francisco and told me to stop talking about $50 oil. He said that such talk wasn't productive, that Saudi Arabia needed $28 per barrel to pay their bills, and that this price wouldn't hurt the U.S. economy, and he said, "… the U.S. is our best customer, and we don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs."

Saudi Arabia fought alongside us in the 1991 Desert Storm war…and paid nearly the entire cost of the war. Private Saudi investment in the U.S. exceeds $500 billion. They share two very important personal characteristics with Americans. We are both proud people and both very individualistic. They get these character traits from their Bedouin heritage, and we get ours from our pioneer background.

We differ on two main issues. The first being the just completed war with Iraq. They were not in favor of military action, as they feared that the result would be a government vacuum, which might be filled by a fundamentalist religious Shiite government, controlled by Iran. The second issue is the Palestinian situation. Arabs cannot forget 54 years of Palestinian exile and the terrible living conditions that have accompanied them. In the early 1950s while studying Arabic in Sidon, Lebanon, I saw thousands of Palestinians living in U.N. tent camps in Southern Lebanon. They were living on $1 per day and the mothers and children were cutting grass along the roadside to take home for the goats and to cook for the family.

The modernization of a country and education of its people inevitably result in political change. However, although urbanization has deemphasized the tribal make-up of the Kingdom, the government continues to practice a form of tribal government that is surprisingly democratic. Twice each month the governors of the provinces hold an open Mejalis (open office). The public can attend and present grievances and requests for assistance. Petitioners take their turn. They do not bow and scrape, but stride up and introduce themselves, more often than not shaking hands and calling the governor or prince by their first name. The governors have a battery of assistants and secretaries lined up next to them, and after a petitioner has explained his problem, they tell the assistant next in line how the matter is to be handled and that it is to be done immediately.

The secular side of the Saudi government is headed by the King and the Crown Prince, supported by their Diwaan (their court, or principal group of advisors), the Council of Ministers and a committee of appointed citizens numbering some 120. There are 13 provincial governments, each with a governor and an advisory committee appointed from the public. Each has its own budget, and they operate much like our states. I have it on good authority that this year, a second committee of advisors is to be formed from representatives of each of the 19 geographical areas, to be chosen by local elections…and it is highly probable that women will vote in these elections. The politics of Saudi Arabia are changing with the times.

Western women living in Saudi Arabia have been frustrated by the need to wear long sleeve, ankle length dresses when in public. Some now wear an abaya. This clothing confinement is largely the fault of bad advice. Prior to 1970, Western women dressed modestly but in Western clothing. They wore collared button type blouses with sleeves to or just above the elbow, knee length skirts and no head cover. My wife was one of the first ARAMCO women to visit Riyadh, which was very fundamentalist in the mid-1950s. Saudi friends and even members of the Royal Family told her that under no circumstance should she change her dress mode. At one time, in the middle of the old market area, she drew a large crowd. An elderly gentleman with a long white beard, waving his large walking stick in the air, told the crowd that it was perfectly proper for Western women to dress as they would in their own countries. They dispersed with no unpleasantness.

The mid-1970s brought a deluge of foreigners new to Arabia. The Saudi government made their companies and embassies responsible for counseling them on the customs and mores of Saudi Arabia. Some agencies, including the U.S. Embassy, stressed the importance of conforming to local custom, including dress modes. My wife, a veteran of life in Riyadh, talked to the American Women's Club and told them that they should continue to dress normally but modestly. But her advice was too late. Frightened by the embassies' advice, women flocked to the local bazaars and bought ankle-length, long sleeved dresses made in Pakistan…more often than not featuring a bulls-eye on the derriere. This cave-in was too good an opportunity for the religious Committee for Public Morality to overlook. From that time on, they have had Western women on the run.

Common Values, Common Goals

Saudi Arabia remains our good friend and ally. Regardless of differences in culture and religion, we share common values and common goals. It is important to both the U.S. and Saudi Arabia that we not let a fanatical minority destroy our 70-year friendship. These radicals have nearly convinced many in the West that Islam condones, in fact demands, their war against non-Muslims. This has been denied by Muslims throughout the world.

The strongest denial occurred in May. A senior member of the Wahab family, one of the truly orthodox, fundamentalist Sunni Muslim leaders, stated from Riyadh that Islam forbids terrorism and that those using the cloak of Islam to justify their evil deeds, are not of the Faith. Roughly speaking, in the Catholic world, this denouncement would be similar to an edict from the Pope.

Saudi Arabia and the U.S. must continue to work together for peace and understanding.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hugh Renfro lived in Saudi Arabia for 23 years, working for ARAMCO & Chevron, where he interacted with all levels of society.  Renfro established Chevron's subsidiary, Arabian Chevron Oil Company in 1975 and managed its activities for eight years.  Currently retired and living in Arizona, Renfro has maintained relationships with his contacts in the Saudi business and government communities.