Word: saudi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Nepotism is rife even in the armed forces. "Every commander has some link to the royal family," notes Anthony Cordesman, Washington's foremost expert on the Saudi military. "Loyalty to the House of Saud is the critical factor, not military proficiency." According to U.S. advisers, many of the princely pilots fly only when they want to. During scrambles early in the crisis, a discouraging proportion of them called in sick...
...university degrees, complaints of meager career opportunities are rising. Because Wahhabism forbids the free mixing of the sexes, educated women are mainly confined to jobs in teaching, nursing and social services that do not put them in contact with men. "We have got to change," says a well- educated Saudi woman in Dhahran. "Some fear that we are like sponges that would soak up the negative with the positive from the West. But it is only by being educated and exposed that we are going to find our own identity...
Given the pressing demands of the current crisis, King Fahd has asked women to volunteer to perform "human services and medical services." This, he added, would be in the context of "fully preserving" Islamic values. Still, say some Saudi watchers, men and women will inevitably be thrown together in the workplace, just as American men and women were during the World War II mobilization...
...Some Saudi liberals seek U.S. support for their campaign for change. "We hope the American presence is not just protection for the status quo," says a businessman. "We assume it will bring an improvement in the integrity of the government." From Washington's viewpoint, however, pushing Fahd and family down the fast track to Westernization and democratization is a likely prescription for a Shah-like disaster. Swift liberalizations could easily stir religious extremists to revolt. "If there's an internal threat to the kingdom," says a U.S. expert on Saudi Arabia, "it's from fundamentalists on the right, not liberalizers...
Speculation that Saudi Arabia will be quickly transformed by the influence of all those Americans on its soil is probably also misconceived. In recent decades Saudi Arabia has absorbed several hundred thousand Westerners, many of them oil-industry experts, without being significantly changed by their presence. One reason is that the foreigners have been kept secluded in luxurious fenced-in compounds that look remarkably like American suburbs...