SAUDI ARABIA: Labor minister teaches a lesson in work ethics

The dude serving hamburgers at a fast-food restaurant in Jeddah recently was neither a Filipino nor a Pakistani but, for once, a Saudi.

And not just any Saudi; It was the labor minister himself. Ghazi Alghosaibi acted as a waiter for three hours at a fast-food restaurant last week to encourage all Saudi young men and women to accept jobs generally regarded by locals as low-level or demeaning, according to the Saudi Gazette.

Saudi Arabia relies heavily on foreign labor in the service sector and for construction work. For the last few years, however, Saudi authorities have adopted a national policy known as Saudization to encourage their nationals to participate more actively in a private sector dominated by guest workers from South and Southeast Asia.

But observers say that the policy has not been very successful.

The minister's symbolic stunt was meant to reach out to Saudi youths. According to Persian Gulf media reports, Alghosaibi drew attention to many successful businessmen and politicians who did small jobs before becoming prominent in their fields:

We should see enjoyment in all types of jobs. Hard work, endurance and enthusiasm are important factors to be developed by young Saudi job-seekers. ... They were simple men who rose to heights of fame and popularity through steady effort and hard work. Some of them worked even in restaurants while studying abroad.

Algosaibi asked for tips jokingly and kissed another waiter on the head in a gesture of appreciation.

-- Raed Rafei in Beirut

Photo: Saudi labor Minister Ghazi Alghosaibi, left, serves fast food at a restaurant in Jeddah. Credit: Saudi Gazette

SAUDI ARABIA: More oil flowing?

Pressure from the U.S. and fears that soaring energy prices are hurting the global economy are forcing Saudi Arabia to consider significantly boosting oil production.

The Saudis are contemplating a “sizable additional increase” in oil production, according to The Middle East Economic Survey. An announcement on possible measures to bring down prices that have reached nearly $140 a barrel is expected later this month when King Abdullah meets with oil producers and consumers in the Red Sea city of Jidda.   

In May, the king rejected a request by President Bush to make more oil available, saying that markets should dictate production levels. But costs have since dramatically climbed. Saudi concerns of a global economic slowdown and fears that escalating prices would compel countries to develop alternative sources, which ultimately would hurt the kingdom, have led to a shift in Saudi thinking.

Finance ministers for the Group of Eight nations -– the U.S., Germany, Britain, France, Canada, Japan, Italy and Russia –- urged oil-producing nations on Saturday to increase production.

Rising prices have shaken the world: Gas in the U.S. has reached as high as $4.43 a gallon and India, Indonesia and other Asian nations have cut fuel subsidies, creating anger and panic among drivers.

SAUDI ARABIA: Activist on hunger strike

More than 30 human rights groups across the Middle East have condemned Saudi Arabia for imprisoning a leading political activist who has reportedly been on a hunger strike since mid-May. The organizations have appealed to King Abdullah for the release of Matrouk Faleh, a university professor who has pushed for democratic reform in the ultraconservative Islamic state.

Faleh was arrested on May 19 after posting complaints on a website about living conditions in the Breidah Prison, where two other leading dissidents, Abdullah Hamid and his brother, Issa, are serving sentences.

The Saudi government “decided to punish Dr. Matrouk for his public criticism of the conditions of detention and to subject him to even more arbitrary measures by confiscating his personal laptop and mobile phone upon his arrest, and, moreover, by inflicting further pressures and psychological torment,” according to a statement signed by human rights groups in Egypt, Tunisia, Sudan and other countries.

The statement continued that Faleh’s wife reported that “prison officials deliberately woke him after midnight claiming that he would be subject to interrogation, tied his hands and feet and tried to force him to eat after he had announced a food strike in protest against . . .his being detained without any notification of the charges against him.”

A political science professor at King Saud University in Riyadh, Faleh, a diabetic, has spent much time in Saudi courts and jails. He was granted a royal pardon in 2005 after being sentenced for up to nine years for demanding constitutional reforms and political freedoms. The Saudi government has not commented on his most recent case.

— Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo

Photo: Matrouk Faleh. Credit: faculty.ksu.edu.sa

SAUDI ARABIA: A barber faces beheading

It’s a profanity uttered countless times a day around the globe, but a barber in Saudi Arabia faces beheading for the crime of using God’s name in vain. Sabri Bogday, a Turk who cuts hair in the Saudi port city of Jeddah, is awaiting appeal on his sentence.

Press reports say Bogday cursed during an argument with a neighbor, who later complained to police. This nation is ruled by a strict Wahabbi brand of Islamic justice that doles out lashings and public beheadings for crimes including murder, rape and heresy.

Bogday has been in jail for 13 months. Turkish President Abdullah Gul has asked Saudi King Abdullah to spare the barber. But the Arab News reported there could be complications hinging on arcane interpretations of religious law by fundamentalist judges.

The newspaper quoted a lawyer as saying: “Some judges consider it heresy and infidelity, and say that the accused cannot repent and so faces the death penalty. Others consider the statement to be disbelief, thus allow the accused to retract what he has said and repent and then set him free. ... Sentences in these cases are limited and considered rare, because the judgment is not based on something that is written.”

—Jeffrey Fleishman in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Photo: A beheading in Saudi Arabia. Source: kvinnonet.org

LEBANON: Backroom deals and checkbook diplomacy

In the conspiracy-minded Middle East, nothing is how it appears, especially when enemies suddenly put aside their differences and make a deal.

After six months without a president and more than a year-and-a-half without a properly functioning government, Lebanon today finally swore in a new head of state, President Michel Suleiman, and began the process of healing a rift which has cost scores of lives in sectarian and political violence over the last few weeks.

On the surface, the U.S.-backed government and the Iranian-backed opposition put aside their differences during talks in the Qatari capital of Doha and made a last-minute deal for the good of their nation.

But nobody really believes that.

On the streets of Beirut, a common view is that Qatari Emir Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani stepped in as talks were about to collapse and whipped open his checkbook.

Most believe his intervention salvaged not only Lebanon but his tiny Persian Gulf state's fledgling attempt at high-stakes conflict resolution and international diplomacy.

LEBANON: Saudis disown Sunni militia

An advisor to the Saudi Arabian leadership told the Los Angeles Times that his government had warned its Lebanese allies against trying to build an armed force to combat Hezbollah, but to no avail.

For months, Lebanon's Sunni-led Future Movement sought to build an armed force under the guise of a security firm, called Secure Plus, in part to counter the Shiite militia Hezbollah's growing strength, according to Lebanese officials, security experts and Sunni fighters themselves cited in a Times report last week.

But at least some in the Saudi leadership — the primary international patron of Lebanon's Sunnis — thought it was a bad idea from the inception.

"The whole concept of these militias was wrong from the start and we never took the idea seriously," said the advisor, who asked that his name not be published because of the sensitivity of the topic.

"We had never directly got involved in the arming of this so-called militia, which was doomed to failure from the beginning due to how it was created and who was leading it up," said the Saudi advisor.

IRAN: Hillary's threat to "obliterate" in war reverberates

 

Better be careful what you say in the heat of a political campaign. It could have global repercussions.

Presidential contender Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's vow to "obliterate" Iran, presumably with nuclear weapons, if it attacked Israel on her watch was duly noted in the U.S.

[UPDATE: To see a video and full transcript of the comment, click here.]

Jaded American insiders shrugged off the remark as typical campaign season bluster, filed away with myriad other exaggerations and gaffes.

But it prompted shock overseas as well as headlines from Bulgaria to New Zealand.

MIDDLE EAST: Al Qaeda speaks again

Al Qaeda struggles to show that it still has its fingers on the pulse of the world, even as it hides out in the rocky mountains along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

The latest presumptive audio recording by Al Qaeda's No. 2 seems to suggest that the Islamist organization is striving to stay relevant.

In the extensive two-hour message posted on the Internet Tuesday, Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, particularly lashed out at the Iranians for their ambitions in Iraq and the Arab region, as well as their attempts to discredit the Sunni Islamist group.

SAUDI ARABIA: A nightmare for women

Human Rights Watch today released a 54-page report criticizing the lack of women's rights in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, one of America's key allies in the Middle East.

It is a lengthy indictment of a a legal system that deprives women of basic rights considered ordinary almost everywhere else in the world.

According to the report, the law treats Saudi women like children, maybe worse.

If you're a Saudi woman, you can't board an airplane, get a job, go to school or get married without the permission of a male "guardian," whether a husband, father or, if they're both out of the picture, your son.

You're not even allowed to make decisions on behalf of your own children without the approval of your husband or father.

Sometimes you're even barred from undergoing a medical exam or leaving a hospital without the permission of a male relative.

SAUDI ARABIA: Death, for taking God's name in vain

Turkey's president and prime minister have stepped in to save the life of a Turkish man sentenced to die in Saudi Arabia.

The prisoner's capital offense: using God's name in vain during an argument with a neighbor, according to Turkish newspapers.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul has penned a letter to Saudi King Abdullah requesting a pardon for Sabri Bogday, a barber who moved to Jeddah from southeastern Turkey more than a decade ago. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has also reached out to Saudi officials on the barber's behalf. 

Apparently, Bogday had an argument with an Egyptian neighbor in Jeddah. The neighbor told authorities that Bogday had "cursed the name of God."

Bogday was arrested, tried and sentenced to death, even though his accuser has apparently disappeared. 

The father of a 3-month-old son has been locked up for 13 months. His family back in Turkey is worried sick that he'll be put to death for blasphemy. An appeal is underway.

We'll give the final word to the astute Fred Stopsky, at the Impudent Observer, who spotted the story:

Saudi Arabia stands with the United States in the fight against terrorism. Unfortunately, that fight against terrorism does not include the nation of Saudi Arabia.

-- Borzou Daragahi in Beirut

SYRIA: Shocker from Iran about militant's death

A stunning report carried by pro-government Iranian media accuses Saudi Arabia of complicity in the February assassination of the militant Imad Mughniyah, the shadowy Lebanese commander with ties to Syria and Iran. 

The report cites unnamed sources close to the investigation and could not be confirmed. At the very least it  hints at ongoing tension between Damascus and Tehran over the course of the probe into the  legendary Hezbollah commander's fiery death.

The report was first published Tuesday by the Persian-language section of the Fars News Agency and then carried today on the front page of  the conservative newspaper Kayhan, which is close to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Iran's top authority on all matters.

On the off chance you read Farsi, the links are here and here. The report has been translated by the Italian AKI news agency, as well.

Mughniyah was a high-ranking Hezbollah commander said to be in charge of the group's international operations. He was killed in a Feb. 12 car bombing attack in a highly secure section of Damascus.

The source quoted in the report told Fars that the Syrians had discovered a network connected to Israeli intelligence and Saudi Arabian Prince Bandar bin Sultan as well as a Saudi intelligence official in Damascus as partly behind the death. The source alleged that the Syrians had already arrested a Saudi official and were about to release their long-delayed report about the killing implicating the Saudis but were swayed by Kuwait to hold off.

Both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait urged their citizens to leave Lebanon after Mughniyah's slaying.

Here are other allegations in the report:

• Israeli intelligence officials monitored Mughniyah's comings and goings for a year before the assassination.
• Conspirators included Jordanians, Syrians and Palestinians who, along with their families, had rented or bought housing near Mughniyah's residence in the Kafar Sosa district of Damascus.
• The Saudi official overseeing the operation fled home after the assassination but was lured back by a woman with whom he was having an affair.

Take 'em all with a grain of salt.

Publication of the report by  pro-government outlets suggests an ongoing rift between Syria and Iran over Mughniyah's death. It could also stir up sectarian troubles in Lebanon, where Shiite Hezbollah is at odds with the Saudi-backed Sunni-led government.

— Borzou Daragahi in Beirut

Photo: The front page of today's Kayhan in Tehran featured a photograph of Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan conferring with President Bush above an article alleging Saudi complicity in the assassination of Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyah.