Jeddah is one of my favourite cities. Not because it’s particularly beautiful, or because it has a pleasant climate, although it does have many attractive features, especially on the Red Sea coastline. And in the winter it rivals many of its flashier counterparts in the Gulf for warm days and balmy nights.
No, what I like about Jeddah is its spirit and life. I’ve just spent a few days in the city on business – I visit two or three times a year, but this was my first trip since the recent floods that devastated the city for the second time in two years.
The city has changed since I lived there in the eighties. Twice as much traffic, twice as many buildings – now stretching to the airport, which used to have several kilometres of empty land between it and the conurbation. The infrastructure, much of which was squeaky clean and new when I lived there, has deteriorated. Many of the old malls look shabby and crumbling, a contrast with the new Dubai-style edifices that have risen on the outskirts.
In the central and northern areas are new highways and underpasses. Everywhere you look there are construction sites. The city, as a matter of urgency, is trying to address the causes of the floods that cost many lives. Huge pipes lie by the side of the road waiting to be installed to capture the run-off water that inundated whole areas in recent years.
This time round, one of my destinations was a factory in South Jeddah that produces cardboard from recycled materials. Now recycling is not something that immediately comes to mind when one thinks of Saudi Arabia. When you arrive at the airport and head towards the North Terminal by bus, you ride past a huge enclosure full of aviation detritus, from battered baggage containers to entire jet engines mouldering away and fully exposed to the elements. The scrap value of some of the specialised metals in the engines must be worth a few riyals of anyone’s money. Perhaps this stuff is awaiting one of those interminable competitive auctions beloved of government bureaucracies.
Drive through South Jeddah on your way to the industrial zone, and you will pass whole areas strewn with industrial cast-offs. You have plenty of time to observe, because many of the roads choke down to one lane as the trucks, tankers and cars struggle to preserve their suspension systems in the face of massive potholes. I never had much cause to visit the area when I lived in Jeddah, so I was also quite taken aback by the sprawl of hastily-constructed, makeshift-looking apartment blocks and one-story buildings that would not look out of place in a shanty town.
And yet, among the industrial wasteland, here was a factory that relies entirely for its raw materials on cardboard collected in the Kingdom. Their managers talked enthusiastically of paper recycling as a growth industry, and of their ambitious plans for the future.
Jeddah will probably never be a city that will see the profit in recycling everything. It is not a third-world city where residents scrape a living from the rubbish dumps and risk their health in extracting marginal value from everything that can be salvaged, repaired or sold on. But I was heartened to see one company making a success out of home grown raw materials other than those that can be extracted from holes in the ground. In a country of twenty five million dedicated consumers, there must be many more opportunities for a canny entrepreneur.
Meanwhile Jeddah gets on with doing what it does best. This is the Umrah season. At this time of year thousands of Muslims arrive in the city on their way to Makkah and Madinah to visit the holy places. My hotel was full of Indonesian pilgrims on Umrah package tours. Courteous, friendly and delighted to be there. Because of its unique position as the gateway to the holy places, Jeddah has long been the pre-eminent commercial centre of the western Arabian peninsula. It is in turns reverent and rapacious, but always vibrant. In its citizens you can see the genetic heritage of pilgrims and merchants who settled in the city over centuries. It still plays host to guest workers from across the Muslim world and beyond, not to mention a sizeable community of illegal immigrants in the rundown tenements and ramshackle souks of the poorer areas.
Elsewhere, the upwardly mobile move into the new apartment blocks overlooking the Red Sea on the North Corniche as Jeddawis get on with the business of making money. As in all the major cities of the Kingdom, families flock to the malls to buy things they don’t really need, while the middle classes worry about how they can afford a house and raise a family. And the hotel doorman from Kashmir (“Kashmir sir, not India, not Pakistan”) grumbles about the niggardly tipping habits of some nationalities while praising the Indonesians for their generosity. The poorer the people, the better the tips, it would seem.
The Jeddah I knew for the best part of a decade is still there. Its face may have changed, but it still has the spirit that made it so attractive. Long may it continue.
This is a guest contribution from my favourite French polemicist, Fils De Danton, who occasionally launches his rhetorical exocets on this site from his garret in France. In this “piece de resistance”, he draws a parallel between the real-life Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund, who is awaiting trial in New York accused of sex offences, and the fictional Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson’s confection of a doctor who experiments with the noble and ignoble sides of his personality.
The minute, the second before, he was one of the kings of the world, regarded by most as a unique sorcerer of finance, a saviour with outstanding skills and political tact. He was considered, and probably considered himself, as a true statesman, in fact, a man more powerful than many heads of state, attending all key world meeting and making decisions that impacted all financial markets.
And the big question was, would he run for President in France next year? Even President Sarkozy was rumoured to say that he was his preferred opponent should he run. But the minute, the second after, whether he is guilty or not, all of that had gone up in smoke. He knew he would have to resign as General Director of the IMF, and that his chances of running for President were now completely gone. And in his country, given his positive image and high standing in the opinion polls, it was like a 9/11 of French politics.
Now, I’m not going to argue here whether Dr. Strauss is a good or a bad man, or whether Mr. Kahn has acceptable sexual practices or not. Let me simply ask a few questions and reflect on what I have been hearing and seeing in this country since the bomb fell.
First, the entire press and the political circles knew about previous “incidents” involving the guy, but it had always been covered up. Even the French President, who propelled him to his former position as head of the IMF, has “files” on him – and others. The rumour is that upon his appointment, he even told Dr Strauss: “You’re going to the IMF, but watch your behaviour…” But now the press and the political world keep shouting for scandal, call for respecting his dignity, and in fact often treat whatever happened in the Sofitel hotel in NY as a mere “sexual act with a chambermaid”. Why? Are all these people worried that the scandal might reflect upon them? Probably. Is this the worst kind of sexism at play? Definitely. And it makes me sick.
Second, what about the chambermaid? Is the whole thing a setup? I don’t know, everything is possible in the political arena, but I’m afraid, given what informed people know over here, that if this was indeed an attack, it would at minimum be consistent with the previous “incidents” mentioned before. And I do know about one thing: had this happened in France, the chambermaid would have been threatened and the whole thing covered up. Is that the reason why Mr Kahn most likely believed he would never get caught, or if caught, would escape as usual, because Dr Strauss is a powerful man? It’s a big mistake to make at this level, and even more so when you aim at holding the reins of power.
But I have no doubt that the hordes of private detectives that the man can afford to hire thanks to his wife’s considerable wealth will unearth the most damaging facts about the chambermaid in question, and make them up if necessary. If she was a victim of a brutal sex attacker, her courage to speak up given the personality in question must have been immense, or she was convinced to do so. Now, a terrible, powerful discredit machine has been set in motion and it won’t be long until the first “revelations” come out. In fact, as I write, Dr. Strauss’ lawyers have just stated that “they have evidence that seriously question the credibility of the plaintiff”. And guess what? Mr. Kahn will probably state at some point, through his highly-paid lawyers, that he feels sorry for her and forgives her.
Third, when publicly asked about “incidents” involving his private life, and in particular about his past affair with a Hungarian IMF employee, Mr Khan always stated two things: 1. “I love women” and 2. “Private life should remain private”. Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? But let me ask two simple questions in return: 1. Are we talking about the same “love”, and is this the sort of love most women want? And 2. I’m sorry, but as a citizen and as a voter, I do believe that anyone in power is accountable for his or her behaviour, and especially for the way they treat others, French tradition for sex or not. But I am obviously a very naive man. All I know is that this new “incident” will fuel the hatred on the part of those who beat down democracy. Devalue the credibility and the moral currency yet again, and what you will get is bombs and grenades in the end. Don’t be surprised when they blow up on your doorstep.
Fourth, I have no issue with the fact that Dr Strauss is a wealthy man. There is no doubt that his technical and political career so far had been outstanding, and that to reach his previous level of responsibility, he had to display second-to-none intellectual and communication ability. But I cannot help thinking that anyone with limited means, which is the case of most of the population in many countries, would have had zero chance of fighting any accusation of this type, and would still be in jail at this stage. Guilty or not, money greatly changes anyone’s ability to stand up to accusations. Again, as I write, Mr Kahn has just moved into a luxury flat for the modest price of US$35.000 a month. He can afford it. You are not in the same state of mind when you prepare your defense in a luxury environment with considerable financial means and when you end up in a cell reeking of urine and may get raped by other guys, especially if you’re accused of being a sex offender. Ask any average person who’s been there, rightly or wrongly, and they will tell you. Again, I don’t blame Dr.Strauss for his wealth, but any justice system in the world, even if I find the US system way more independent than the French system, leaves the ordinary person helpless and extremely vulnerable. And by the way, I read very few words in the press about the greater independence of the US system compared with the French one. Whenever I read anything on the subject, it’s to blame the US system for being cruel and unfair. Not so in France, of course, that so-called birth place of the universal rights of man…it’s shameful, despicable arrogance.
Fifth, was he a “happy” man? If you read what psychiatrists have to say about compulsive sexual urges, you will find that the common view is that people who display this sort of disorder are actually in deep pain. I take the point. But if he actually did what he is accused of, why should anyone’s suffering cause even greater suffering for somebody else, and especially a woman, “king of the world” or not? Prior to the incident, some members of the press were wondering whether he would actually run for President. Some said the place where he was truly happy was his Marrakech riad, others that his wife was the really the one who wanted him to be President.
We will probably never know, the questions are no longer relevant. But a relevant question is this: why was he so popular in the polls? For a simple reason, I think, that I find very telling and frightening in fact: he was seen as a technical finance expert who would probably be the right person to “manage” France appropriately and bring more wealth to most people. The sort of man he might be, and I do say he might be, seemed to be completely irrelevant. That is a sign of these sad times. “Panem et circenses”, (bread and circuses) I’m afraid.
But I don’t apologise for saying that we have to stop looking for technical managers who can run simply things, in business and in politics alike. We need above average people on the human side as well and we have to stop voting for hypocritical arrogant profiteers. Is that easy for me to say that? No, it is not. I am a man of limited means. But despite that, I do expect people in power, whatever their political colour, to display more human dignity and faith than simply to provide cheaper petrol and lower interest rates. There’s no purity or heroism about that. What drives nations is also a sense of pride and respect. Stop abrogating your responsibility and accountability in this regard, boys and girls, you’re shooting yourselves in the foot. Don’t be surprised if you get anger in return some day, whatever your contempt for most of us.
It’s not a pleasant thought, but let me finish with what I found was the saddest aspect of the whole thing. There was an “entertainment” side to this tsunami, and the media played it to the full. Gone were the reports on the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and the fact the situation is still very critical over there, or the fact thousands of people in Japan, including children, are going to die in great pain on the altar of economic growth are at all costs, and without the necessary expense on safety. Gone are any news on Haiti and the terrible diseases over there, scarce and few are any news on the suffering of the Libyan people on both sides. It’s as if all that had turned boring, and was not “news” any more. The demise of a smiling, respectable king of this world had suddenly become better, more exciting news, just as the OJ Simpson trial or Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky did at the time. It’s shocking and despicable manipulation, and we should not accept it.
“Democracy is the worst of regimes…after the others”, French politician and war leader George Clemenceau once said. I think we would all agree. But it seems to me there’s still a lot of growing up to do. Stop looking for the best minds, the best technical experts, the most astute political leaders, whatever their weird behavior. Despite the so-called financial collapse, which is still going on by the way (ask the Greeks, the Irish and Spaniards), stop thinking democracy is all about wealth creation and f……g big cars or houses, or disasters will happen over again and again until the edifice truly collapses. Do we want that? If not, fight for it. At the heart of democracy, as the revolts in the Arab world are showing us, lies the dignity of man and respect for others. That should be valid in Western “democracies” as well, and even more so, because elected leaders should manage by example. Who in the media and the political world is saying that? You tell me. Is all hope really gone? Really?
Honesty and ideals are not vain or dirty words. We don’t need Dr Strausses and Mr. Kahns any more. We need leaders who manage for the best in man, care less for money, unlimited ecstasy or self-satisfaction and manage more for healthy balance, basic dignity, and I dare say it, awareness and harmony in the 21st century at last. Were no lessons drawn from the 19th century, the century of imprisonment, or the 20th century, the century of mass destruction? The Dr. Strausses and the Mr.Kahns of this world should be left behind for what they are, relics of days gone by and failed political systems.
Many are the substitutes, but they’re powerless on their own. That applies to any kind of sex as well. In the meantime, the French first lady is pregnant. That is good news for the French President, who in the context of the events in NY now looks like a truly balanced, respectable and “clean” family man as a result. That is the sort of man he is of course, and we can trust him. We all know that, don’t we?
“Beware the fisherman who’s casting out his line
Into a dried up river bed,
But don’t try to tell him ‘cos he won’t believe you.
Throw some bread to the ducks instead, it’s easier that way.
I feel like an alien, a stranger in an alien place.”
Genesis, “Heathaze”, 1980…
As always, Fils de Danton focuses like a laser on the fundamental issues – should politicians, or anyone else for that matter, be able to use their wealth and power to keep their little personal secrets secret? What sort of politicians do we want in our new century. And do we want to live in a society that connives in covering up the pecadilloes of the powerful up to the point that such pecadillos morph into alleged criminality? Influence and tradition in France, super-injunctions in the UK, media suppression in other countries. Are we to judge famous people who occupy positions of trust or influence – whose personal example inspires behaviour in others – by the whole person, or by what they allow us to see?
For you to decide.
Kuwait is set to be the scene of an interesting lawsuit in the near future. A Kuwaiti lawyer has been retained to prepare a civil case against another lawyer – and the owner of the TV station on which the accused broadcast – for defaming two deceased Saudi scholars.
Quite right. I have no opinion on the legacy of two sheikhs, except to note that they are widely respected and revered. And I have no doubt that the lawyer’s comments have caused offense.
But leaving the issue of the sheikhs aside, I have long chafed against the commonly-held Western legal principle that you cannot libel the dead.
As a loyal subject of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, I feel what must be her pain at the gross defamation by historians of her distinguished ancestors. Think of how she must feel as historians describe that paragon of marital fidelity Edward VIII as a serial adulterer. How about the insulting description of George III as mad? What about the stained reputation of Henry VIII, who did away with several of his wives for entirely justifiable reasons, and should be known as a gentle, peace-loving poet, musician and athlete who never harmed a fly except under extreme provocation? And Richard III, whom that dastardly playwright Shakespeare falsely described as having a physical malformation, and accused of murdering his beloved nephews who happened to have a claim on the throne?
Widening the context slightly, since I am possibly one of hundreds of millions of descendants of Genghis Khan, I take issue with false claims that he massacred the entire populations of cities that resisted his humane and benevolent invitations to become part of his enlightened empire.
In fact, I would go further in changing the libel laws in the West. I would make it possible to sue not only people who libel the dead, but to go for the descendants and estates of deceased people who have done so.
This would have three benefits. It would elevate lawyers to their rightful place at the top of the earning tree. It would provide governments with a vast new revenue stream if they imposed a tax on settlements due from such lawsuits.
And finally, once the dust settled after the hurricane of global litigation, we would be spared the perennial curse of history. No more exposure of inconvenient truths, debates about historical precedents, parallels and trends. Archaeologists would be put out of business in case they discovered something injurious to the reputation of a historical figure.
In short, it would be impossible for us to speak anything but good of the dead for fear that any adverse opinion would render us liable to being sued by some outraged descendant of an historical personage loved by many.
The only history left would be the official versions compiled by the wise, the great and the good, duly enshrined in the constitutions of governments who know much more about these things than we humble citizens.
The end of history, some might think, but not as Francis Fukuyama saw it. Bring it on, I say. There’s too much history anyway. We need to be looking forward, not backwards, no?
Sorry for my silence over the past week or so. I’ve been absolutely slammed with various projects of late – I do try to earn a living occasionally – so I’ve been a bit short on energy and perspective.
Normal service will resume soon…..
Bahrain’s Gulf Daily News yesterday picked up on a story in blog-of-blogs Pajamas Media stating that that an “Iranian aid flotilla” was due to set sail on the same day to show solidarity with anti-government protesters. Today we learn that the flotilla, allegedly two boats full of students, scholars, doctors, women and children – oh, and a team to cover the event from the Iranian news channel Press TV – was ordered to return to Iran. Not, apparently, before dropping in the sea 5,000 letters of support for the protesters. Links relevant to the story are here:
http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/ArchiveNewsDetails.aspx?date=05/16/2011&storyid=305979
http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/NewsDetails.aspx?storyid=306072
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/iran-turns-up-the-heat-in-the-gulf/?singlepage=true
The darker side of the story was that the blogger, who claims to be a former Iranian CIA agent, and writes under a pseudonym, stated that the Iranians are training volunteer Basiji paramilitaries for a “martyrdom operation” against Bahrain, and that the would-be martyrs were planning to be on the boat. The same blogger has previously claimed that the Iranians were responsible for the PanAm Lockerbie bombing of 1989. The Iranian authorities, however, were quick to deny that the occupants of the flotilla were armed.
The whole episode seems rather odd to me. The flotilla never had a chance of reaching Bahrain, so it was clearly one of those pieces of political pantomime beloved in the region – taking a leaf out of the Gaza book perhaps. Then we have the ex-CIA man (why ex?) writing for a vaguely conservative and libertarian US media outlet, whose intention is clearly to make us locals afraid, very afraid. The other odd aspect is that the episode doesn’t seem to have attracted widespread attention in the mainstream international media.
So our nerves are rattled by reports of death squads heading our way, and soothed the next day by the news that in fact they ain’t going anyway, and that in any event there were no suicide bombers on the boat. It sounded like a nice day out in the Gulf for the Iranians, though.
Bahrain is involved in a delicate balancing act in its communications right now. One the one hand we are hearing stories of Iranian interference like this one. Given that the story appeared in the GDN and not its rival English language daily, the Daily Tribune, the story seems to be a piece of smart reporting on the GDN’s part. On the other hand, the government is keen to assure both the domestic and international audience that everything in the island is under control, and that things are back to normal.
It is going to great lengths to restore the confidence of the international investment community, of the Saudi weekend tourists and of Bernie Ecclestone, who it hopes will give the green light for the rescheduling of the cancelled Bahrain Grand Prix.
Things do appear to be improving on the economic front, although the damage to the small businesses – who don’t have the resilience of the bigger players – is palpable. But stories about Iranian death squads and suicide bombers do not help. Certainly that will not dismay the mullahs, who in their world view stand to gain from the economic destabilisation of the country.
Sadly, the ones who seem to be suffering most are the little guys, like the souk trader who according to the GDN has decided to close his 50-year old family business. The big hotel chains and family businesses can recover. Small businesses, many with roots stretching back to the old Bahrain, may not. And that will be a great shame.
I wrote yesterday about Princess Noura University, whose massive new campus in Riyadh was opened yesterday by the King. I happened to be in Riyadh at the time.
As a counterpoint to the celebrations, I came upon a rather downbeat assessment of the Saudi education system in yesterday’s Arab News that set me thinking.
In Certificates of the poor state of our educational system, originally published by Al Eqtisadiah, Abdul Rahman Muhammed Al Sultan laments the low standard of teaching, the disconnect between success at school and prospects of employment and the failure of attempts to reform the system. He goes on to say:
The failure to correct our educational system will cost us. We all know that the recent decisions made by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah to make temporary employees permanent, increase employment opportunities in the government and pay assistance to the unemployed are aimed at resolving the unemployment problem. The royal decisions will result in an extra financial burden on the government as a result of the creation of more jobs in the public sector. This will be a long commitment on the part of the government. Circumstances may change. Oil prices may not remain as high as they are today, and the volume of oil exports may also drop. This may take us back to the days when the budget suffered deficits and development projects shrank. The salaries of government employees constitutes a large chunk of government spending.
The present expansion of employment in the public sector will be at the expense of the government jobs in the future. Future graduates will have few chances to be employed by the government. If more than 400,000 secondary school students are expected to graduate this year, you can imagine that the future graduates will have very little chances of getting government jobs.
Attempts to rectify the loopholes of our education system through training programs by the Human Resources Development Fund have failed. They have also failed in increasing job opportunities for Saudis in the private sector.
We need brave measures to save our education system from its present regression. Otherwise we will face a big problem in the future. The problem will not be solved by employing more people in the public sector. We have to take real reform actions to improve the quality of our graduates. It is pointless to say we have made progress while everybody knows that our education system is bad and is in need of courageous steps to rectify.
Clearly Abdulrahman Al Sultan is not impressed by the efforts of the Ministry of Education to address many of the underlying problems in the education system through its offshoot Tatweer – a corporation specifically set up to improve curriculum, teaching standards and educational technology.
With apologies to all my educationalist friends both within and outside Saudi Arabia who know far more about the subject than me – and would perhaps be able to blow what I have to say on the matter out of the water – here are some thoughts from a simple soul who has had some dealings with the Saudi education system, but is by no means an expert.
The issue of employment is paramount.
Effective training and development of young entrants to the workforce can effectively make good many of the educational gaps resulting from failures in the primary and secondary systems. If the government is prepared to make funds available to the private and public sectors to pay for supplementary education programmes for first-time employees, such programmes, if properly designed and organised, could make a big difference.
That does not help the unemployed. A national service scheme for the young unemployed might do so. I wrote about this idea, which came from a Saudi friend, in a recent post. The context was Bahrain, but the concept could equally apply to Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Technical and Vocational Training Council could have a role both in supplementary programs and in administering a non-military national service scheme. Its current remit is to establish technical institutes designed to meet the vocational skills needs of the Saudi economy. It will be familiar with learning by doing, which is a part of the gap left by the education system. The physical institutes it has set up around the country most likely have spare capacity to handle additional students, and possibly access to additional faculty.
A new Saudization plan has been launched by labour minister Adel Fakieh. I will not comment on it here, because it is too big a subject and deserves a separate analysis. But hopefully it will address some of the obstacles to getting young Saudis into work.
The second big issue is the curriculum. Thanks to the Tatweer programme, I understand that there have been a number of positive changes to the curriculum, but that the focus on rote learning, and what some perceive as a lopsided emphasis on religious education, have not changed significantly.
I appreciate that this goes to the heart of Saudi society – the ongoing debate between different elements of society about the purpose of education. It’s a sensitive subject. The current emphasis in the system on the liberal arts – those disciplines that most effectively teach pupils to think critically – is close to zero. That’s not to say that young Saudis emerge from school with no critical thinking skills. And teachers are now being encouraged to develop the critical thinking and problem-solving skills of their charges. But most students acquire those skills despite rather than because of the system – through individual teachers, parents, peers and personal curiosity.
I have no startling insights to offer here. I would encourage the government to press on with its reform of the curriculum – no matter what the political cost, and what eggshells will be stamped upon in the process. It’s that important.
Finally, moving to the teachers. Teachers who are undervalued will underperform. While there are fixed salary scales for teachers in state education, this does not apply in the private sector. Private school operators only have two ways to increase profit – increase fees, and cut staffing costs. In a competitive market, increasing fees is not easy, unless they invest in value-added activities that differentiate them from their rivals. So the easy option is to cut back on salaries of teachers.
A Saudi friend recently told me about one female teacher who is paid a salary of SR1000 a month by the private school that employs her. This is one third of the new civil service minimum wage set by the government recently. Her driver, on whom she depends to get to work, is paid SR1200 a month! Why she bothers is beyond me – by claiming the new unemployment benefit she could receive double the amount from the government. The same friend told me that the school receives subsidies from the government for each Saudi that they employ. Cutting back on teacher salaries is one way they can improve profitability. She and others like her can only make ends meet by private tutoring in her own time. How the additional hours are likely to diminish her effectiveness in her main job is questionable, but her energy levels are hardly likely to be enhanced by the extra workload.
Surely there is a case for a blanket minimum wage for teachers, whichever sector they are working in? If this were to work, however, another practice would need to be stamped out. This is the misuse of visas issued by the Ministry of Labour. As long as it is possible for a person to be brought in on a work visa as a clerk, say, to work as a teacher, it will always be possible for employers to get around any minimum wage stipulation.
An additional factor is that the education system would be in great difficulty without the many foreign teachers it employs. Most of these are from neighbouring countries like Egypt and Jordan. No problem with that, provided that the teachers are of the requisite quality. This is especially the case in the private schools, but according to one source, 20% of the teachers in the state system are of foreign origin. The population is growing so fast that local teachers are unlikely to be able to satisfy the demand, especially in outlying areas that are not popular with teachers from the main urban centres.
So if we accept that the system will have to continue using foreign teachers for years to come, would it not be sensible to adopt a new approach to the training and hiring of those teachers? Why not take a leaf out of other government departments and GCC countries that are protecting themselves against food shortages by buying agricultural capacity in countries such as Cambodia and the Phillipines?
If the Saudi government were to set up education colleges in, say, Egypt and Jordan, it would be able to control the quality of the teachers it recruited from those countries, and ensure that they were trained to deliver the Saudi curriculum – hopefully in the meantime suitably upgraded – to a measurable standard. In this way, everybody wins. Employment for Egyptian and Jordanian nationals, higher teaching standards and happy kids. The same standards could be put in place in the Saudi education colleges. Result: a new breed of teachers operating to consistent standards. The same colleges could also be used for re-education of teachers already in the system.
This would not be the same as outsourcing production. It would be owning the means of production, but in another country where raw materials are plentiful.
But the primary concern is the standard of Saudi teachers. Again, Tatweer is attempting to address this with teacher education programmes, but if Abdul Rahman Al Sultan is to be believed, their process thus far has not yet made a serious difference.
I’m sure that Tatweer’s Western consultants will also have advised them that re-training and leadership development is not enough. To improve teaching standards there needs to be the ability to remove those teachers who have little potential to improve. And firing people from government jobs is not easy in the Kingdom. So motivated head teachers who want to improve their schools are in the same position as football coaches who are expected to take their teams up the league tables without being given funding to buy new players. Some can do it, but many others give up in despair.
Another much-heralded aspect of the Tatweer programme is investment in technology. Electronic whiteboards, modern networks, laptops for the students and so on. All fine, but technology is no substitute for talent. It’s the teachers that count.
So the story seems to be – judging from the various conversations I have had on the subject – that the outlook for education in Saudi Arabia is not as gloomy as the Arab News’s columnist suggests. But much remains to be done, and there is plenty of scope for creative solutions.
I’ve just got back from a brief trip to Riyadh. Though I normally drive from Bahrain, I chose to fly this time, and so had an opportunity to admire the spectacular new campus of the Princess Noura University, which is close to the airport. Last time I passed by was 18 months ago. At that time it was a building site. Now it’s complete, and it is truly massive.
It also so happened that today was the grand opening of the campus by King Abdullah. As the Arab News reports:
Apart from administrative buildings, the new campus includes a 700-bed university hospital, 15 colleges, a central library, a conference hall, laboratories and three research centers for nanotechnology, information technology and biosciences. It also comprises staff housing units, student hostels, primary, intermediate and secondary schools and recreational facilities.
King Abdullah laid the foundation stone for the university in October 2008. Designed to accommodate more than 50,000 students, PNU has been described as a milestone in the history of women’s education in the Kingdom. The university has a high-tech transport system with automatic and computer-controlled vehicles linking all important facilities on the campus.
Interesting that the capacity has increased by 10,000 from the reported number when I last wrote about the campus. Also that the Arab News article quotes a UNESCO report that women make up 58% of the total student population of Saudi Universities.
So the same question applies that I asked in my earlier piece: given the male working population of Saudi Arabia massively outnumbers the females, where are the jobs for all these graduates? Since a similar proportion of the students studying abroad under the King Abdullah Scholarship Program – the most commonly quoted number for these students is in excess of 100,000 at any one time – are women, the question comes up again. In another article in the Arab News, Aliya Al-Shalhoub, originially writing in Al Riyadh newspaper, takes a very downbeat view of the prospect of persuading the women of Saudi Arabia to take up a quoted figure of 500,000 jobs said to be available to them:
It is quite strange that the total number of Saudi workingwomen represents only 16 percent of the total workforce in the Kingdom. At the same time, the nation’s expenses on women’s education is 53 percent more than that of men. This problem continues to remain without any substantial change for several decades. Here the question is: How is it possible for us to make job opportunities for unemployed Saudi women available and attract half a million of them to the employment market?
From my personal viewpoint, I do not see any possibility for this. This is not because of our inability to create employment opportunities, but because of the so-called red lines prevailing in the job market. I regret to point out that I see these red lines still vivid. We are unable to take up jobs of sales staff in lingerie shops currently held by some 300,000 foreigners, because of our social and economic cautiousness. Meanwhile, our young women are staying indoors in their houses.
The maintenance and electrical departments at our women’s universities, colleges and schools are not in a position to make available training programs and eventually job opportunities for our young women. It is also highly regretful that women are barred from taking up vast job opportunities available in various fields such as medicine, law and various other services related to women. Most of these positions are being held by foreigners, while Saudis watch this situation remorsefully.
In my earlier post I asked whether the massive tertiary education programme for women was King Abdullah’s way of levelling up the playing field for the women of Saudi Arabia without forcing a confrontation with the conservative elements in society. Certainly the King’s interest in PNU is very strong, as the Arab News emphasised.
Looking at the situation again, I had another thought.
It’s pretty clear that many of these graduates will not find jobs any time soon. As I understand it, there simply aren’t enough to go round – or, as Aliya Al Shalhoub points out, too many red lines getting in the way – even though the PNU curriculum focuses on areas that the government clearly believes are appropriate for women – medicine, dentistry, nursing, information technology, kindergarten education languages, translation and pharmacy.
But then I recalled a conversation with an educationalist in Bahrain who told me that many female Saudi graduates have no intention of working. They actually believe that by getting a degree they will improve their status and thereby their chances of marrying well.
That I can understand, given that Saudi Arabia is so family-oriented. However, there is the danger that if the bias in favour of women undergraduates continues, a number of the women will have to settle for men who are less qualified than they are. I’m sure that they would be happy to accept the situation provided that they are marrying a good man. But since there is such a strong cultural imperative for husbands to be the masters of their families, is there a chance that some of them might feel a wee bit insecure marring a woman with better qualifications than he has? The Arab News has reported in the past on this issue. It could intensify in the future.
A Westerner might think that all those education dollars producing thousands of well-qualified housewives is a waste of resources. I’m not so sure.
It will take more than a generation before the traditional Saudi family structure – where the man works and the woman stays at home with the kids – changes significantly, even though the number of women in the workforce is steadily increasing. But if more and more mums are graduates, the chances are that those who don’t delegate the upbringing of their kids to their housemaids will promote the benefits of education to their kids – boys and girls alike. They will be better able to help them with their homework and perhaps, just perhaps, they will take the view that education in the home is as important as what their kids learn at school. And that their contribution can help overcome some of the inadequacies of the current primary and secondary systems in the Kingdom.
I’m not suggesting that the present generation of young female graduates will turn into tiger mothers in the Chinese style, and obsessively drive their kids to succeed at all costs. And I’m sure that that there are many mums, graduates or otherwise, valiantly supporting their offspring today. But I do feel that the more mums there are who cherish the education they have received, the more they will encourage their kids to go down the same route.
So perhaps Princess Noura University will be good for Saudi Arabia in more ways than one.
Today’s widely reported story that Morocco and Jordan are applying to join the Gulf Cooperation Council has interesting implications. The UAE’s Gulf News spells out the essence of the story in today’s edition. Here are some extracts:
“Gulf Arab leaders say they have welcomed Jordan’s and Morocco’s requests to join the bloc.
The news of the Kingdoms of Jordan and Morocco possibly joining the Gulf Cooperation Council states was met with shock and awe amongst users of social media networks within minutes of its announcement. Shaikh Mohammad leads the UAE delegation at the annual Consultative Summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in Riyadh on Tuesday. Saudi King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz and Abdul Latif Al Zayani, GCC Secretary General, also attended. The developments in Yemen and the GCC mediation, the situation in Libya and Syria were on the summit’s agenda.
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) could be the umbrella for all the monarchies in the Arab world after the six-member alliance on Tuesday welcomed bids by the kingdoms of Jordan and Morocco to join it, its secretary general Abdul Latif Al Zayani said.
The foreign ministers of the six countries were tasked to start negotiations with their Jordanian and Moroccan counterparts to complete the required procedures, according to media reports from Riyadh where the leaders of the GCC states held their one-day annual advisory council.
The summit has no specific agenda, unlike the official annual rotating summit, usually held in December.
The membership of Jordan and Morocco would also have a deep political, social, economic, security and defence impact.
Jordan is geographically linked to Saudi Arabia and both kingdoms share terrestrial borders that stretch more than 700km.
Yemen has often said since the 1990s that it wanted to join the alliance, but several factors have hampered a positive response to its requests.
The Gulf Cooperation Council includes Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.
The bloc of monarchies was created in 1981 to coordinate political and economic policies. Following a meeting Tuesday in Riyadh, Gulf Arab leaders welcomed Jordan’s request to join.
A statement on the Jordanian news agency said Jordan is seeking a free trade agreement with the GCC.
The six countries are seen as among the most influential of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ members.”
As the report suggests, the possibility of Jordan and Morocco joining the GCC has wide implications. Aside from the political considerations, the prospect of free movement and employment within an expanded GCC for Moroccans and Jordanians is likely to be the subject of intense debate within the current GCC administrations. One only has to recall the massive influx into the wealthier economies of the European Union of migrant workers from newly-admitted members such as Poland, the Baltic states and Romania to project the potential impact of the expansion of the GCC.
If mass migration into the economic honeypots of the Gulf were to result in the replacement of other non-GCC nationals by Jordanians and Moroccans, the change would most likely be seen as positive among current GCC nationals. Both countries possess large numbers of highly qualified professionals who would be an asset to prospective new employers. But if their arrival impacted programmes in most GCC countries to increase the employment of nationals, they might not be so welcome.
The Gulf News piece also emphasises that the current GCC members are all monarchies. Does the proposed expansion to include two more monarchies imply that one of the organisation’s primary objectives is the preservation of monarchical systems of government? If so, then Yemen is potentially excluded forever. Yet one could argue that Yemen is the infected thumb of the Arabian Peninsula, and that its incorporation into the GCC – either as an associate or full member – would be one of the most effective ways to enhance the security of the region, provided of course that the wealthier members were prepared to invest heavily in the reconstruction of the country. The case for more proactive support of Yemen by the GCC was well made in a recent article by the Emirati commentator Mishaal Al Gergawi.
Another implication of the proposal is the position of Egypt, one of the big beasts of the region. If Egypt finds itself outside an increasingly powerful economic and political bloc, how is it likely to react? By making common cause with neighbours or near-neighbours such as Algeria, Syria, Lebanon and Libya – assuming of course that those countries return to political equilibrium? And then of course there is the question of how regional players such as Turkey and Iran will seek to shore up or enhance their influence. Last but not least, how would Israel deal with the shifting landscape of alliances on its doorstep?
So expect a rash of analysis on these issues by commentators far wiser than me.
One final observation though. Expressions of support in the Arab world for political initiatives do not imply imminent action. Proposals are often aired to test opinion, and then quietly laid to rest if they meet widespread public or behind-the-scenes opposition. So don’t be surprised if this initiative takes years to implement, or alternatively fades away. Remember the snail-like progress towards monetary union within the current GCC.
Diabetes is a condition with which I am personally acquainted. Like Abdullah Babujair, whose article about the prevalence of the condition in Saudi Arabia appears in today’s Arab News, I’m not a doctor, but I can only endorse his concerns about the prevalence of the condition in the Middle East:
“I AM not a medical doctor. I am also not diabetic. Regardless, the news report that said about a quarter of the Kingdom’s population is diabetic really terrified me.
We seem to have become the single largest diabetic nation in the world. Millions of Saudis walk around carrying this killer poison called “diabetes.” This sickness destroys all organs of the body, like a bulldozer smashing everything it passes. Kidney failure is caused by diabetes. Liver cirrhosis, arteriosclerosis and blindness are all caused by diabetes. No doubt, specialized medical doctors know much more about the implications of this disease.
Diabetes was first registered in the Kingdom about 30 years ago. By that time it was only 2.2 percent. In 1985 the ratio rose to five percent, reaching 12 percent 10 years later. The latest statistics show that 24.7 percent of the population is diabetic.
This is a real catastrophe by all means. It is said to cost us more than SR51 billion every year.”
Saudi Arabia is not alone within the region in this affliction. Time Out Bahrain, in an article published last year, claims that 15% of the population of Bahrain are diabetics, and that the percentage is set to double within the next two decades. It also states that five out of the six countries most affected by the condition are Gulf States.
What’s the cause, and what’s to do? I leave the technical solutions to doctors and dieticians. But it can’t be a coincidence that hand-in-hand with the rise in diabetes cases, fast food has taken such a grip on the region, that obesity is widespread and that so many citizens in the region prefer a sedentary lifestyle – aided by the ubiquitous automobile – to a regime of regular exercise.
It also doesn’t help that Saudi Arabia in particular seems highly reluctant to encourage exercise among women. Crossroads Arabia comments on this here.
In addition, the issue of consanguineous marriages comes into play. Predisposition to diabetes can be passed on genetically, so the common practice in the region of unions between close relatives loads the dice in favour of a number of genetic disorders of which diabetes is one.
The GCC countries have challenges enough dealing with social problems such as unemployment, inadequate housing and education systems in need of reform. Add the consequences of a rapidly growing proportion of diabetes sufferers, whose symptoms will worsen over the coming decades, and you have the challenge of overburdened health infrastructures, increased illness and absenteeism among workers in mid-career, early retirements and increased costs of health insurance.
A compelling case for proactive social programmes to changes attitudes towards diet and exercise if ever there was one. I suspect that changing attitudes towards marriage traditions will be the tougher nut to crack.
In my last post I mentioned the CNN list of must-read Middle East bloggers. One of the sites they cited was Rantings of a Sandmonkey, by the Egyptian blogger Mahmoud Salem. Here’s an extract from his latest post in which he demolishes a number of myths he says have arisen in the wake of the revolution. The full post is here.
It’s hard to imagine a more compelling stream of optimism about the future of Egypt:
“7) There is doom and gloom everywhere!
WRONG! There is nothing but optimism and the prospect of a brighter future. Yes, there is economic instability and the economy will go down for a bit, but that’s only natural and part of the healing process. When you take an anti-biotic to cure you from a disease it is bound to keep you bed ridden and feeling tired for a few days so that you can properly heal, but you will heal and you will regain your full health eventually. We are completely unaware of what’s happening in the country because things are happening so fast that everything seems like it’s standing still. But the country is moving, the virus of the revolution spreading everywhere and changes are happening by the minute because 30 years worth of changes and reform are unleashed all at once. We are living in Hyper-time, and every person who sees a hole in the foundation of our country is working really hard and fast to plug it, and the future is looking brighter every day because of it.
Think of state TV employees who are protesting right now demanding that our national TV practices real journalism without an agenda. Think of the coalition of restaurant owners that is being formed in order to tell the municipalities that they won’t pay bribes anymore, and if they wish to shut them down they can go right ahead and face the wrath of all of their employees. Think of the students of the Lycee in Cairo, 6 and 7th graders, who did a 3 day sit-in protest demanding the return of a teacher that got fired for carrying an anti-Mubarak sign in Tahrir and forced the administration to re-instate him. Think of all the 8 and 10 year olds who went out with their parents the day of the referendum to vote and had the experience engrained in their psyche forever, something we never had ourselves, and know that they will never allow that right to be taken away from them. Think of all the 12 year olds who are watching all the hot issues (secularism vs. theocracy, left vs. right, the role of the army, the role of the police, etc..) being debated all around them right now, and having their political consciousness formed right now and know that when they turn 18 it will be next to impossible for someone to trick or co-opt them. Think of all the 15 and 16 year olds who are watching the protests all around them and the lessons and mistakes that we are doing and think of what those kids will do the moment they get into college in a couple of years or when they join the workforce. Think of all your friends, wherever they are, who are joining and debating and talking and wanting to help and do something, and know you are not a solitary phenomenon. The Virus is everywhere. The Future is AWESOME. We will not save Egypt, Egypt will save us.
Now go and think of how you can help. And when you encounter people whose stupidity or irrationality or ignorance frustrates you, smile, because you know in 6 or 7 years they will no longer exist nor be of any influence.”
What particularly strikes me about this passage is his description of how the young of Egypt are getting involved in politics. But I do have mixed feelings about the extent to which children should become directly involved.
I think it’s absolutely essential that they learn to think for themselves about political issues, and that they debate and hone their critical thinking skills on the issues of the day – not only those in their own countries but in the world in general.
When I was growing up I remember often talking about politics within my family. I went to a liberal private school, where we had guest speakers visiting on a regular basis to talk about current affairs. We were encouraged to look at all sides of every issue. And whenever there was a general election, the school would organise mock elections in which we would debate and vote for the party of our choice. It was amazing how many 15-year-old scions of wealthy families pledged their allegiance to the Trotskyites. Though in the end the majority stuck to their wealth-preserving roots and voted Conservative.
If I look at my children, growing up as they did in the UK, I was always surprised at their relative ignorance about current affairs. I’m sure they would admit this if asked. The only time they would get engaged would be over issues that affected them directly, such as university tuition fees. And in Britain such radicalisation as occurs these days seems to happen more often at university rather than school. Whereas in my youth we had causes célèbres such as the Oz Trial, in which the publishers of a hippie “underground magazine” were given jail sentences for obscenity after they published an edition entirely produced by schoolkids.
In Egypt and other parts of the MENA region going through protest and uprising, it’s hard for kids not to get involved when they are around adults taking to the streets. It’s entirely natural for them to join in the debates at home about the future of their countries and – even more pertinent to them – of their own families. And some of the attempts to educate children in the region about the democratic process are inspiring. Witness the Children’s Parliament initiative in Yemen I wrote about a while ago.
However, things can become sinister when “youth movements” start springing up. Young people who are brought up in environments in which critical thinking skills are not at a premium – and I’m thinking of the educational systems of several Middle East countries – are much easier to indoctrinate and manipulate than those who don’t have rote learning and unquestioning obedience shoved down their throats from an early age. Even in countries where education in the humanities is much more prevalent, governments are capable of enlisting millions into highly regimented and ideologically “correct” movements such as the Nazi Hitler Youth and the USSR’s Komsomol.
Politicisation on a less formal basis often starts very early. It’s always disturbed me to see pictures of six-year-olds parading with their parents in the streets, wearing bandanas with slogans and toting wooden and sometimes real guns. It might suit the parents to ensure that their children inherit their beliefs, but if the kids go through a rigid education system there is the danger that their minds will be locked forever into a specific way of thinking. That is, of course, if they make it to adulthood, unlike thousands of Iranian child “martyrs” who charged onto the Iraqi guns during the Iran/Iraq war.
And as I think Mahmoud is implying, the youth of the Middle East are going to have to cope with ambiguity, not certainty, in the years ahead. They are going to have to be able to show flexibility of thinking and a creative approach to problem-solving if they are to help their countries into a brighter future.
So right up there – along with social, political and economic development in countries like Egypt – education, and especially the teaching of critical thinking skills must be a top priority.
Otherwise the Arab Spring will be for nothing, because the next generations will become entrenched in the same certainties that have led to the stand-offs and conflicts of the past fifty years or more.
And I’m not talking just about Arab youth by the way. The same goes for youth throughout the world, because whatever region we come from, we are all stakeholders in each other’s future. I may be one of those who, in Mahmoud’s words, are “pontificating really superficial analysis about something they can neither understand or grasp”, but I believe that I’m stating a self-evident truth.
A couple of days ago a friend sent me a link to an article on the CNN website singling out ten must-read blogs from the Middle East. It’s a good list. I already knew about some of them, but I have added a couple to my favourites bar.
My only quibble about CNN’s list is that it picks up exclusively on Arab writers and – with the honourable exception of Mahmood the Bahraini Blogfather – most of the writers seem relatively young.
So I thought I would share a slightly more eclectic list of blogs from various parts of the Middle East and North Africa. Some are Arabs, some not. Given that there is such a large expatriate community across the region, their contributions should be recognised also. And some are young, but others are, shall we say, less young!
Here – in no particular order – is my list:
Crossroads Arabia: I have written in more detail about John Burgess’s website in an earlier post. John is a former US foreign service officer who served in a number of Middle East locations during his diplomatic career. He writes mainly about Saudi Arabia from a US perspective. Erudite and sharp, he is a one-man compendium of media sources both from the Middle East and the US on subjects related to the Kingdom. His comments are wise, open-minded and undogmatic. Even though he is based in the US, I include him on the list because for any dedicated Saudi-watcher, he’s a must-read.
Mideast Posts: A blog-of-blogs based in Dubai that sees itself as a HuffPost for the Middle East. The site has grown rapidly since its inception last year. I declare an interest here – they use quite a lot of my stuff. Also some of the other sites on this list feature regularly. I like the site because they work with a wide range of bloggers from across the Middle East and beyond. Also they are continually expanding their list of contributors, so one encounters new gems all the time.
Tahir’s Blog: Tahir Shah is a best-selling travel writer who was educated in Britain but comes from a prominent Afghan family. His father was Idries Shah, a well-known Sufi philosopher and a prolific author himself. Tahir’s best-known books are In Arabian Nights, an exploration of the role of stories in Arab and Muslim cultures, and The Caliph’s House, the story of the year he spent renovating an old house on the edge of a Casablanca shantytown. He has not updated his blog for some time, so I’m not sure if he has abandoned it altogether. But even if he has, you will find a wealth of material on Morocco, writing and a host of other topics in his archive. There are also a number of excellent articles on his website that you will find here.
American Bedu: As the title suggests, the author is an American woman living in Saudi Arabia married into a large Saudi family. Like John Burgess, she is a former US foreign service officer. Her blog takes a different tack from John’s though. She focuses on life in Saudi Arabia, and writes prolifically on social issues, women, culture and people she meets and interviews. Her perspective is personal, kindly and often moving. With a foot in both camps, so to speak, she is able to portray Saudi Arabia both from the inside out and the outside in. A very popular blog in these parts.
Saudi Jeans: Another well-known blog, the creation of Ahmed Al-Omran, who hails from the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. Ahmed writes on politics, social issues and much else besides. He has not been posting regularly of late because he is currently on a journalism course in the USA. But his posts are always interesting, and his blog is full of links to other sites. He is unusual in that he also writes an Arabic blog. He is often interviewed by the Western media when covering Saudi Arabia. Ahmed has been blogging since 2004, so there is a wealth of material on his site.
Robert Twigger: Robert is another travel writer, and a friend of Tahir Shah. He is based in Cairo. He writes about so many subjects that it’s not surprising that one of his abiding interests is polymathy. To give you an idea, his last three posts have been about point-to-point horse racing, two types of creativity and swarm working. He also wrote some compelling pieces during the Tahrir Square uprising. He has led desert and jungle expeditions, written a number of books and is a well-regarded poet.
Real Talk Blog: Ali Shah is, on the evidence of his blog, a well-travelled businessman from Pakistan based in Riyadh. He writes about business, life in Riyadh, entrepreneurship, Islam, the South Asian expatriate community and Pakistan. What I like about his blog is that it is full of stories. He has strong opinions, and I don’t agree with all of them, but his writing is vivid and never boring.
Man in a Desert: Fans of Al Jazeera will be familiar with the work of Omar Al-Issawi, a prominent Lebanese journalist and documentary producer. Omar was one of the founding editors of Al-Jazeera, and before then worked for BBC Arabic. As you would expect, his blog is full of informed and well-written opinion on political developments in the Middle East. His recent posts have unsurprisingly focused on events in Syria and Libya, but look at the subject categories in his blog, and you will find a wide range of subjects, from Pink Floyd and Osama Bin Laden to censorship and the International Space Station! Well written stuff from a gifted journalist.
Eye on Saudi: Saad Al-Dosari is a telecoms engineer based in Jeddah, which was my home town for ten years way back when. He writes about business, marketing and social life in the Kingdom. I enjoy his pungent comments on Saudi business life and practices. He’s particularly good on branding and the social media, and has written some interesting stuff on recent political developments in the region. An open minded, entertaining and lively blog.
Spirit 21: Last but not least, the blog of the journalist Shelina Zahra Janmohamed, who introduces herself by saying “They say that there is a glass ceiling for me because (as Michael Moore would put it) I am not a stupid white man. Another They says I should temper my passions and desires, my dreams and ambitions because I am not a brown be-turbaned man. Some Theys say that I should fight my oppression, that I should rout it and defy it. Some say I face no oppression, that I should be happy that I am blessed and should accept my fortunate and happy lot. If you are not with us, they say, you are with the others, and they are wrong.” She has written extensively for the UK Media and is a columnist with The National in the UAE. Last year The Times included her in their list of the 100 most influential Muslim women in the UK. Many of the posts on her blog are of material published in the various media to which she contributes. She is particularly strong on women’s issues. An excellent read.
So that’s my top ten. There are many more bloggers out there who produce interesting material, but not on a regular basis – some of them are just getting started. And I don’t pretend to have explored all the English-language blogs in the Middle East. If you have recommendations of blogs I’ve missed, please let me know. I’m happy to review another batch at some time in the future.
Meanwhile, if you haven’t come across these sites yet, check them out. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.
There has been some chat lately about the possibility of government and private sector employers in Saudi Arabia putting biometric recognition systems in place to prevent employee lateness and absenteeism. John Burgess of Crossroads Arabia comments on an Arab News article here.
Most of the objections centre on the argument that what is important is not attendance per se, but what sort of a job the employee does when they are at work. John rightly points out that in order to do a job people actually have to show up, and that timeliness is a fundamental work value.
The attendance issue is complicated by a number of other factors that have a bearing on the employment landscape both in Saudi Arabia and in other Gulf countries.
One of the major factors is underemployment. In order to mitigate high levels of unemployment among young nationals, the easiest palliative measure is to create government jobs that for which there is no requirement. This has two effects.
Firstly, bored employees have little to do and therefore every incentive to slope off at the first opportunity. Secondly, hiring staff you don’t need means you have to find something for them to do. An obvious solution is to get them involved in endless paper pushing. So any attempt to improve business processes by cutting out unnecessary bureaucracy comes up against the dead hand of job preservation.
This is an old problem. When I first arrived in Saudi Arabia in 1981 I was required to apply for an airside pass for the airport in Jeddah. In order to get the pass, I needed at least eight signatures on the application form. Although the Saudis have improved their processes since then – particularly in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – there are many government departments that remain highly bureaucratic, according to friends who have to deal with them on a regular basis.
In the private sector, I recently visited the offices of a senior executive to be greeted by three or four staff in the great man’s anteroom. None of them appeared to have anything to do. I suspect they were there because the executive’s status demanded that he had a certain level of staff to attend to his personal needs. No needs, no work.
This is not a unique phenomenon. Private companies have government-mandated quotas for employment of nationals. Provided that they can afford it, many employ low-level staff simply to make up the numbers. This is hardly a recipe for an effective and motivated workforce. To compound the problem, underemployed staff tend to degrade the productivity of those who are fully employed by diverting their attention in one way or another.
Another barrier to motivation is employment and promotion through patronage. Although most of the large companies in Saudi Arabia have formal selection criteria, I have often heard tales of relatives of influential executives being employed – and subsequently promoted – with little apparent regard to their abilities. This is more likely to happen – and more understandable – within family businesses that wish to develop the next generation of owners, but I suspect that some of the Kingdom’s flagship companies are not immune to the power of patronage. Working alongside someone who you believe has less ability than you, and yet seems to be on the fast track, can lead you to question the point of your unrewarded efforts.
And finally, there is the traditional autocratic management style that many business owners and executives adopt with their subordinates. I know of one business owner who has his employees sign an attendance sheet when they arrive for work. If the employee is only ten minutes late their pay is docked. However, they are expected to work whatever hours the owner requires with no additional reward.
If you are a professional, you expect to work a “professional day”, which can be open-ended depending on what you need to achieve. Being docked for a minor infringement is hardly designed to inspire loyalty in someone whose talent is highly likely to be appreciated elsewhere. And if you are a less qualified employee, you would expect some form of recognition for working long hours. By his inflexibility, the owner is showing his contempt for all his staff.
All these issues notwithstanding, the picture is not black and white. I have met many inspiring managers in this region with happy and productive workforces. But as long as there are insensitive people practices and institutional barriers to productivity, there will be calls for high-tech sticking plaster solutions such as biometric recognition systems that end up addressing one problem and creating others. All the while, the real issues – such as motivation, engagement, career development and equal opportunities – remain unaddressed among many employers.
A Kingdom-wide employee engagement survey across both the private and public sectors would be an excellent way to quantify the issues and their impact on national productivity. It would enable the public sector at least to develop some best practice and programmes that address causes rather than symptoms.
In the end, though, you can have an incessant stream of systems, programmes and initiatives, but you are wasting your time unless you have leaders who believe in the changes and set a personal example in implementing them. And that’s a challenge shared by employers across the world.
In the end, I couldn’t resist. As I anticipated in a recent post, I spent the day of the Royal Wedding playing golf, badly. Back at home, my wife had recorded the highlights. So we sat together that evening, me in a weary heap, she still enthused by the day’s proceedings, and watched it.
And that strange feeling came over me that always seems to descend like an emotional mist on state occasions – whether memorials, weddings or funerals. The same feeling that had me welling up at Diana’s funeral. I had no strong emotions either way about the woman, yet the manner of her send-off triggered a response over which I had no control.
State ceremonies are theatre. And if there is a tradition that brings more people to London than any other, it is our love of spectacle. Other countries have scenery equal to ours – beautiful cities, majestic landscapes – but few can match our ability to put on a show.
Perhaps it is because theatre is so ingrained in British culture. From early childhood, we have taken part in theatre of one sort or another. We have dressed up, shown off and sometimes cringed with embarrassment. At school, as reluctant shepherds in the nativity play, or as triangle players in the end-of-year show. At home, as princesses, cowboys, aliens and terminators. We have all been directed or choreographed – in church, on playing fields, in parades or school assemblies.
And few countries can boast of a theatrical heritage that includes Shakespeare, Sheridan, Shaw, Pinter, Lloyd Webber, Brenton and Hare. The Globe, the Theatre Royal Drury Lane and the Royal Opera House. And the Royal Ballet, the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. Even if we’ve never been to the theatre, the chances are that we’ve seen movies with British actors and directors, with casts of thousands and sets designed at Pinewood and Shepperton.
TV coverage of a royal wedding or funeral ticks most of the boxes for successful entertainment. Not too short and not too long. Spectacular uniforms and ridiculous hats. Precisely choreographed activities. Celeb close-ups. An element of reality TV as we wait for someone to lose control or forget the script. An opportunity to sneer or swoon. The aaah moment as the bride moves up the aisle or the coffin enters the church under the shoulders of six solemn men. The occasional dramatic intervention or unscripted moment, like the applause for Earl Spencer’s tribute to Diana, or William’s struggle with the wedding ring.
But the two elements that bring me out in goose bumps are the settings and the music.
Westminster Abbey so reeks with history that you can almost feel the ghosts enjoying the ceremony. A nine hundred-year-old church that houses the tombs of kings, queens, admirals and poets. Medieval altarpieces and ancient arches. And on this occasion decorated with the green trees of England and a hanging garden of plants and flowers.
Great churches are built for choral music. On this occasion, we had motets and hymns, led by one of the finest choirs in the world, singing the words of William Blake and the music of Parry and Rutter.
Without an ancient setting filled with music, such ceremonies would be little more impressive than a parade ground exercise interspersed with the occasional speech. And for me, the occasion doesn’t even have to involve people at all to hit the emotional spot. I have had the same feeling when stumbling upon an organ recital in a near-empty cathedral in Bruges, and a choral concert in a crumbling Venetian church.
I suppose that the obvious thing to say about the Royal Wedding is that it instils a feeling of national pride. But I find it hard to take pride in something that I did nothing to create, and of which I am a part only through the accident of birth.
But I can admire, and I can feel fortunate.
I admire many things about my country, exemplified by Westminster Abbey and the music that filled it last Friday. I admire our poets, playwrights, composers, philosophers, architects, engineers, scientists and explorers. And yes, many of our monarchs, politicians, statesmen and soldiers, as well as the common decency of generations of ordinary people who are not buried in the Abbey.
And despite the many imperfections of British society, I feel lucky to have received a superb education in the English countryside, to have grown up in a green and pleasant land, to be able to think and speak freely without fear of persecution. I also feel fortunate that when I am sick, I will be treated without reference to my ability to pay, that nobody can lock me up and throw away the key without due process of law, and that there are people who are prepared to give up their lives so that I can live in safety.
I don’t feel protective about our cultural heritage – it is part of something much larger, a patchwork of cultures, each unique yet interrelated. We have taken much, and we have given much. We have destroyed as much as we have created.
But as I looked at the theatre playing out in front of a sizeable portion of the world’s population last week, I thought to myself that there is no other country I would prefer to have nurtured, educated and immersed me in its culture.
And wherever in the world I happen to be, when I visit Britain, I am coming home.
Some thoughts on Osama’s death:
He must have welcomed it. For a man who so craved attention and respect to spend however many of his final years locked up in that villa, living in the equivalent of house arrest, must have felt like a living death. The famous video of him taking a stroll in whatever mountain haven he inhabited before 2001 is evidence of his love of the outdoors – confirmed by stories of his children dreading yet another excursion in his company in the mountains of Tora Bora. No amount of reverent visitors would have made up for his enforced seclusion behind four concrete walls.
He will have effectively been waiting for death. He must have known that he would be found sooner or later. He will also have known that his hopes of an Islamic caliphate had been greatly diminished by the Arab Spring. And he will have realised that – be it in a villa or a cave – his imprisonment was for life.
Should he have been taken alive? If the American objective had been to take him alive, there was a good chance that they could have done so. Details of Osama’s death are unclear, but there is no suggestion that he killed himself. The argument for killing him would have been that had he been captured alive, there would have been that constant threat of some form of hostage operation intended to secure his release. If he was held in America, there would have been no chance of any president agreeing to such a demand. So the result would have been more killing.
On the other hand, if he had been taken alive, he would have been diminished in the eyes of his supporters, much as Saddam Hussain was when he was dragged out of his hole, dishevelled and lice-ridden. As things stand, the myth of Osama will forever be more powerful than the human being. And there is no guarantee that there will not be as many killings in retaliation for his death as there might have been if he was taken alive. Letting him live would also have removed the stigma of extra-judicial execution.
What was Pakistan’s role? President Zardari’s claim that Osama’s capture was the result of longstanding cooperation between the US and Pakistan – but that his government had no idea where he had been – may hold some water. On the other hand, suggestions that the military – and particularly the ISI – must have known where he was, may be correct. Their motivation might have been to keep him where they could have kept an eye on him and those who visited him. At some stage, when they deemed it politically advantageous, they could have handed him over to the US.
But it is also not a dumb idea to hide in an unlikely location such as a military cantonment. Firstly, because it would be last place anyone would look, and secondly because Waziristan – where he was reputed to be – was subject to regular drone attacks. So it would have been safer to receive visitors in a seemingly secure area. It is possible that he was living in Abbotabad entirely undetected.
If it turns out that the ISI or other elements of the military were aware of his presence, or even protecting him, this might still not be inconsistent with Zadari’s position or that of other Pakistani politicians. The military is a state within a state, and the ISI is most likely a state within a state within a state. Pakistan is not like the US, where a chain of command from the President downwards is followed without question. The ease and regularity with which the military has taken the reins of power on several occasions in Pakistan’s history is evidence of its independence. It is entirely possible that the politicians simply do now know the full extent of the activities of the military, and especially of the ISI.
What next for US-Pakistan relations? It would be wrong to describe Pakistan as a failed state along the lines of Somalia, but it is certainly fractured, and hosts many power bases besides the military – the religious factions and the feudal landlords of the Sind and Baluchistan, for example.
Whether these factions and power bases act in concert or each according to its agenda, Pakistan is a diplomatic nightmare for the United States, because its dealings with the country have to be multilateral. There is always the question of whether a single power base calls all the shots in the country, so no certain guarantee that any agreement through normal diplomatic channels will stick.
Pakistan is not a stooge of the West. It has a population of almost 200 million very proud people. Its expatriates live in great numbers across the Middle East. Sons and daughters of Pakistan hold British and American passports in equally great numbers. Like its cousin India, it is a force to be reckoned with. It may be poor, but it is not insignificant.
For an insight into how many Pakistanis think of themselves, read this post – What do you think we are – by Ali Shah, a Riyadh-based Pakistani businessman who writes the Real Talk Blog. I don’t agree with all his ideas, and he might not agree with my opinion on the fractured nature of the Pakistani state. But for people in the West who see Pakistanis as constant victims of natural and man-made disaster, Ali Shah’s edgy piece provides a telling counterpoint.
Whatever the effect on Al Qaeda of Osama’s death, Pakistan remains the political lynchpin of the region. The US and its Western allies will be focused on relations with that country for years to come. Although the West has leverage it can use – primarily economic – it must realise that Pakistan will do nobody’s bidding and follow no agenda but its own, even if it seems that there are multiple agendas in play. There are few more daunting diplomatic challenges for the West.
I’ve thought long and hard about whether or not to mention the Royal Wedding. And I’ve finally decided that since every Brit who regularly strings a few words together seems to be launching into print on the subject, I might as well join them.
I’m in England at the moment, and no, I haven’t received an invite. And even if I had, I’m not sure what I would have to say to David Beckham and the King of Swaziland. And I wonder what sort of conversations will ensue between the dignitaries and the celebs. Between Sir Elton John and the President of the Zoroastrian Trust Funds of Europe, for example.
I may sound like an old curmudgeon, but there appears to be a disconnect here between public sentiment and the acres of gushing coverage in the British media. It seems that there is an endless capacity to find new angles about dresses, hats, uniforms, guest lists, wedding cakes and fancy hats. Yet most people I speak to seem more enthused that we have two successive double Bank Holiday weekends. So the British public has the opportunity to take eleven days of holiday at the cost of only three days of their annual entitlement.
Add to that the unusually fine weather – Easter weather in the UK is normally foul – and people are deluding themselves that summer has arrived. They are hitting the beaches, taking to the road, guzzling ice cream and wandering around in skimpy clothing as if we were in the middle of August.
Of course, being British, we are incapable of enjoying the moment without spotting a down side. We are being warned by the water companies that the recent long spell of dry weather is likely to lead to summer water shortages. And weather-watchers – which means just about the entire population – are muttering that all this good weather surely means that summer will be over by July, just when we’re getting round to taking our proper holidays. Wedding watchers, of course, are convinced that it’s going to rain on the happy couple’s big day.
The latter eventuality would be a blow for me too, because on wedding day I’m planning a day’s golf competing in a special event referred to by some of the less reverent competitors as the Republican Cup.
I’m not a republican, by the way. But there are times when I would prefer them to ride bicycles rather than gilded carriages, like some of the more egalitarian European monarchies. And while I have a lot of respect for the Queen and her direct line of succession, I can’t help feeling slightly queasy at the deference paid to some of the minor royals whose elevated opinions of themselves do not sit well with their lack of talent and usefulness.
However, my opinion counts for nothing, and come the day, there will be street parties, large ladies in flowery dresses and big hats getting steadily drunk on champagne and collapsing over the cream tea, young men getting into beer-fuelled fisticuffs over girls, little girls prancing around in their princess dresses, grannies weeping in front of the telly and dogs stealing the sausage rolls.
Meanwhile, as the bells ring out from the churches of England, I shall be somewhere around the eleventh tee, cursing my cack-handed golf swing and reaching in the bag for yet another ball.
But I do wish our future King and his bride health and happiness. And I remind myself that one of the reasons why I love my country is that a cynical old grump like me can take a gentle dig at our beloved Royal Family without being accused of disloyalty, treason or worse. And that over the past nine hundred years a lot of people died for that right.
I find futurology – the art of predicting future trends, discoveries and inventions – a fascinating business. Not only can you compare today’s world with that predicted by writers and scientists of yesteryear – the likes of HG Wells, Jules Verne and Arthur C Clarke – but you can try your own hand against the experts in imagining the near future based on trends in play today.
Michio Kaku, a professor of theoretical physics at the City University of New York, has written a book called Physics of the Future that is due to be published next month. In it, he cites ten key predictions that he has gathered from three hundred leading scientists.
The predictions start with the near term – contact lenses that give you digital images accessed via the internet, a personal body shop of spare organs, and telepathy devices that can decipher radio signals form the brain – all said to be achievable by 2030.
Then there scientists who predict that by 2070 we will be able to make Jurassic Park a reality by bringing back extinct animals, and that genetic engineering will substantially increase the human life span.
And there are those who say that by 2100 we will be able to change the shape of objects by creating “programmable matter”, develop nanoparticles that destroy cancer cells before they have the chance to turn into tumours, and that we will be able to become bionic men and women by implanting robotic technologies into our bodies.
And finally, also by the end of the century, we are led to believe that there will be sky elevators that will take us into orbit without the need for rockets, and tiny starships capable of approaching the speed of light.
Hollywood has already anticipated a number of these predictions in a variety of sci-fi movies, just as it dramatized many of the classic stories of Wells and Verne, such as War of the Worlds, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Time Machine.
But for me, the most exciting fictional device of all is perhaps more mundane, but more far-reaching in terms of its potential global consequences. That device is the Babel Fish – the creation of Douglas Adams, the author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. In Adams’s novel, the Babel Fish is actually not a device, but a fish that you insert in your ear. It translates every language in the universe into your own, so that you can have natural conversations as if the person you are talking to is speaking in your tongue.
Translation technology is still pretty crude – try translating the paragraph above into Russian and back again using the Google translation tool and you’ll see what I mean. And even the best interpreters struggle to provide a seamless translation into your earphones at a conference.
So imagine having a standalone earpiece – rather like the current Bluetooth device – that connects with other earpieces and simultaneously translates between languages. The same technology could be embedded in phones, TVs and cinemas.
There are numerous technical challenges. Artificial intelligence so sophisticated that it can make sense of fragments of speech, idiom, dialect and accent. Super-fast broadband that delivers the translated words virtually simultaneously. The capacity to store a massive database of information in the earpiece, or to link to servers over the internet. Then there is the problem of disambiguation, which occurs when a translator is asked to decide between more than one different meaning for a word.
The technology exists or is under development to deliver the hardware required for a Babel Fish device. The software is likely to be the main obstacle. But if IBM is capable of developing a computer that holds its own in quiz shows against human contestants, then the complexities of delivering meaning as well as words – in real time – should be solvable within the foreseeable future.
So suppose as many people had a translation device as have smartphones today. Sadly, a lot of translators would find themselves out of work. But perhaps more significantly, language would no longer be a barrier in communications between cultures, societies and nationalities. Less widely-spoken languages would no longer be endangered by the dominant tongues, because people would be able to communicate freely in their native tongues. Linguistic hybrids used in SMS and instant messaging would no longer be necessary.
There would also be profound changes in the teaching of language. Because it is likely to be some time before translation software is capable of capturing all the nuances of all the main languages, it is possible that linguistic subsets will emerge that will need to be taught in schools. We already have Simplified English, which is a dramatically cut-down version of English based on an approved set of words and grammatical constructions. Similar, but more sophisticated subsets would need to be developed for every language. But given time, such subsets would no longer be necessary, and Mandarin speakers would be able to have natural conversations with German speakers without understanding each other’s languages.
No technology is likely to take away the joy of learning and speaking foreign tongues. But if we reach a point at which the majority of the world’s population can communicate freely without language barriers, then perhaps the sense of the other that pervades humanity will slowly erode, and it will be easier for us to transcend our cultural divisions.
There are downsides, of course. As is the case with internet-based technology in general, the consequences of a breakdown in a world relying on universal translation systems would be too catastrophic to think about.
And there are other, slightly scarier implications of similar technology. The ability to analyse stress patterns in voices that might indicate that the other person is lying or hiding something is one example. So you could record a conversation and run a lie detection test when the conversation is over. Which is fine if you are in a business relationship, but potentially dangerous if you are a jealous spouse looking for signs of infidelity. However good the technology is, there will always need to be an element of human judgement in the process.
But technology is neutral. It’s what we do with it that matters. And translation technology will develop in the coming decades. If, to borrow the BBC motto, “nation shall speak unto nation” without the barrier of language, I bet that future generations will look back at the development of a real Babel Fish as one of the most profound events of this century – up there with the invention of the internet in the last one.
Wisdom is in the eye of the beholder. Those whom we see as wise are usually those whose views we share, or – if we do not agree with them – we respect. For me, one such person is John Burgess.
I read a lot of blogs from and about the Middle East. The site I visit the most is John Burgess’s creation, Crossroads Arabia. The author is a former foreign service officer with the US State Department. He is an Arabic speaker, and did two tours of duty in Saudi Arabia, the main focus of his blog.
I’ve never met or spoken to John, but I know a wise man when I see one. In his blog he comments on media stories about the Middle East – both from the region and from the US – in a way that demonstrates knowledge of the region far exceeding mine, and that of many higher profile “experts” whose opinions are regularly rolled out in the international media. His coverage is insightful, sometimes humorous and often biting. Most important in a blogger, his thoughts are always succinct and well argued.
I’m not sure if he would appreciate being called a blogger. His site is an emporium of knowledge that I drew upon heavily when preparing to return to the Middle East three years ago.
His most recent post on the odious Quran-burning pastor, for example, contains a wealth of information about the legal complexities around the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which enshrines the right to free speech in US law.
Over the years he has pointed me towards invaluable sources of information. Thanks to his literary reviews I have read a number of books that I otherwise might not have stumbled upon – one of the reasons why I often review books in my blog.
How he finds the time to come up with so many stories, some with multiple links to further reading, is beyond me. And he has been doing this for the past seven years.
What I appreciate most about Crossroads Arabia is that it is written with a generous spirit. John is not afraid to criticise aspects of society, Saudi or otherwise, that he finds absurd or regressive. But he does so with an absence of the chauvinism that sometimes taints commentary from his country and mine.
Crossroads Arabia is essential reading, not only for Westerners who want to get under the skin of the Middle East, but also for Middle Easterners who are interested in getting a Western perspective on their region.
I have no motive for praising John Burgess’s site other than to recognise excellence, and to appreciate the efforts of its modest creator.
The other day I received an intriguing email from an acquaintance who is a graphic designer. Like me, she has a great affection for Bahrain. Unlike me, she thinks a lot about images and symbols. I tend to think in words rather than pictures, so I find it refreshing to get a perspective from a mind that has different wiring from my own.
National flags are touchy subjects. Nowhere more so than in the United States, where abuse of the national flag is tantamount to secular sacrilege – if you will forgive the contradiction in terms. So my acquaintance is naturally a little hesitant at suggesting a new flag for Bahrain at such a sensitive time.
But new national flags can be powerful symbols of new beginnings – as was the case when South Africa changed its flag at the dawn of post-apartheid era. So at some stage, perhaps Bahrain will look at rebranding itself in the most powerful way possible – with a new flag.
Here’s what she wrote. For me one particularly interesting aspect is the history of the Bahrain flag – something I knew little about:
National flags are potent patriotic symbols. The Bahrain flag is a much loved national institution that has emerged one of the unsung victims of the recent unrest, and that symbolism has now taken on a complex face.
Way back in time it was a simple red cloth, the white strip was added to mark the Trucial agreement between Britain and Bahrain in the early 1800’s. In 1932, a serrated edge was added to distinguish the flag of Bahrain from those of its neighbours.
The flag originally had twenty-eight white points, but this was reduced to eight in 1972. In 2002 the number was again reduced to five, so that each of the points could stand for one of the Five Pillars of Islam. Of course there is another story much older that says the colour of the Bahrain flag originally symbolised the red cloth pearls where kept safe in, Bahrain being the pearl and the red being blood lost protecting it and its natural wealth.
In light of circumstances and the fact that the Bahrain flag is very much a symbol of government, and also that Bahrain’s neighbour, Qatar, shares an almost identical flag, I wonder if it isn’t a good point in time to consider the possibility of Bahrain having a new flag to symbolise and encourage new ways of thinking, acting and being and define Bahrain for future generations?
As a graphic designer I understand the subliminal strength and power of the colour red. To me it represents no less than 13 concepts; sin, guilt, pain, passion, blood, anger and hate, courage and sacrifice, warning, danger, emergency and alarm. But what about love, with red oozing from every card shop on Valentine’s Day, red too is the colour of love, except when there isn’t much of it about. White, however, is the colour of peace, good, harmony, tranquillity, purity, cleanliness, healing, and honesty.
Many a sportsman in the old days would wear white or predominantly white, it was a subliminal message that “I may beat you in this game but I do it in the spirit of goodwill, peace and friendship i.e. good sportsmanship”, so we wonder nowadays why sports have become more violent and sportsmen in need of anger management. The world is hotting up and with so much red around and the anger and passion it produces, not to mention the other things on the symbolic list, isn’t it time for a little cooling, peace- making white?
Dare I propose a new Bahraini flag? A new flag would act as a reminder to all sides of their role in the making of a new kind of peace in Bahrain.
The internationally recognized symbol for peace was originally designed for the British nuclear disarmament movement by Gerald Holtom in 1958. The symbol is a combination of the semaphore signals for the letters “N” and “D,” standing for “nuclear disarmament”, so although it has come to stand for peace to much of the world, it doesn’t actually mean peace.
Nicholas Roerich (1874–1947) on the other hand, the founder of a movement to protect cultural artefacts, designed a lesser known symbol using a maroon on white emblem consisting of three solid circles in a surrounding circle which has been used as a peace banner in times of both peace and war to protect historic monuments, museums, scientific, artistic, educational and cultural institutions. According to the Roerich Museum:
“The Banner of Peace symbol has ancient origins. Perhaps its earliest known example appears on Stone Age amulets: three dots, without the enclosing circle. Roerich came across numerous later examples in various parts of the world, and knew that it represented a deep and sophisticated understanding of the triune nature of existence.
But for the purposes of the Banner and the Pact, Roerich described the circle as representing the totality of culture, with the three dots being Art, Science, and Religion, three of the most embracing of human cultural activities. He also described the circle as representing the eternity of time, encompassing the past, present, and future. The sacred origins of the symbol, as an illustration of the trinities fundamental to all religions, remain central to the meaning of the Pact and the Banner today.”
More than the red and white of the national flag, the most striking colour combinations I see all around me every day in Bahrain and throughout the Middle East is black and white. It is the ultimate combination of balance, pure and simple and that is what seemed to exist here in Bahrain once upon a time, so wouldn’t it be interesting to have a new flag for new times combining these elements?
Changing the national flag may seem at first impractical, as it now appears not least on so many car number plates, and unthinkable in terms of another symbol of national identity removed like the Pearl Monument, but many flags have evolved through the maturing experiences of nation building, hence the complexity of the Union Jack, which might, for better or worse, be the most widely recognised flag of union in the world.
Her point about the Union Jack is well made, although in my time there have been many attempts to associate it with extreme right-wing nationalism of the kind peddled by the British National Party. Many Brits identify more with the flags of the constituent parts of the union – England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Thought-provoking stuff. The current emphasis in Bahrain appears to be on continuity and security, so I’m not sure if such a radical rebranding would be high on the national agenda until things have calmed down, and emotions are less raw. But although there could be many different opinions about the symbolism of colours for a new flag, her ideas are an interesting contribution to current thinking about the way forward for the country.
Today is St George’s Day. Most years I hardly notice the feast day of the patron saint of England, Georgia and a host of cities in Europe and the Middle East. I’m on a short break in England, and the usual barmy celebrations are in evidence. At the golf club where I play when I’m home, there’s a St George’s Day competition. Flags everywhere, and a guy dressed as a medieval knight wandering around at the starter’s hut. Most Brits only know the saint as the man who slayed the dragon.
In the Christian tradition, St George was soldier in the army of the Roman Emperor Diocletian. He was much favoured by the Emperor, who quickly promoted him through the ranks. But he had a secret that he eventually revealed. He was a Christian in the army of an emperor who had prescribed the worship of Jesus. Diocletian ruthlessly persecuted Christians wherever he found them. When George declared his faith, the Emperor is said to have offered him a number of inducements to return to the old gods. George refused, and was decapitated.
Why do I mention this everyday story of persecution and martyrdom? Partly because St George was a man of the Middle East, and partly because his feast day in England coincides this year with the Easter weekend.
He was born in Lydda – now known as Lod – a prosperous city in an area known in Roman times as Syria Palaestina. Lod is now a major city in the state of Israel, and the location of the country’s main airport – David Ben Gurion International Airport.
He died in Nicomedia, Diocletian’s administrative capital – once in the province of Bithynia, now in modern Turkey.
That his feast day should coincide this year with the passion of Christ is apt. To a modern resident of the Middle East, martyrdom seems synonymous with Islam. And plenty of martyrs have been created over the past few months. Not far from St George’s birthplace, Palestinians killed by Israelis, and Syrians killed by other Syrians. Further afield, Egyptians, Tunisians, Yemenis, Bahrainis and Libyans. All martyrs in the eyes of some – criminals and enemies in the eyes of others.
George’s martyrdom is a reminder that in the Middle East, dying for faith did not start with Islam. It is also a reminder that across the region, Christian communities have been steadily marginalised. Coptic churches have been bombed in Egypt. Assyrian Christian communities in Iraq have come under frequent attack. And in Bethlehem, not far from Lod, the Christian population today makes up less than 25%, compared with 75% in 1947.
Much of the depletion of Christian communities has taken place over the past century. Not all of the acts against these communities have been in the name of Islam. Christians have long complained of persecution in secular Turkey, for example.
It was not always thus. Within the great Islamic empires, both Christians and Jews were often treated with far more tolerance than Muslims and Jews were treated by the Christian kingdoms.
In the early days of Islam, many of the Christian traditions – daily prayer and fasting for example – were adopted by Islam. Christians and Muslims often worshipped in the same buildings. Even today, the Middle East has a rich tradition of Christian worship in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Jordan, Israel and Iraq.
About eight years ago my wife and I spent a week on holiday near Antalya, on the South Coast of Turkey. We spent much of that time visiting the magnificent ruins of some of the Greek and Roman cities of Asia Minor – amphitheatres, temples, tombs and cobbled streets. On one excursion to the town of Demre, we happened upon a church said to have been founded in the 3rd century CE in honour of another saint – Nicholas of Myra. He had a reputation for miracle working, and for secret gift giving. This was the St Nicholas who became Santa Claus – the benevolent symbol of Christmas.
There are many other saints from the early Christian era in the Middle East who are still venerated across the world today. It is sad that the region from which they hailed is often seen by outsiders as the domain of a single faith.
The Middle East has given the world three of its great and enduring religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam. All preach love and respect for humanity. Yet at various times in their histories, the followers of each faith have been persecutors and persecuted.
On St George’s Day, my thoughts are with modern victims of intolerance, and my hope for the Arab Spring is that is that it awakens a renewed respect of difference – political, ethnic and religious. If it simply leads to new barriers that replace the old ones, then surely it will have been in vain.
Some time ago, I wrote an article for the employment section of a leading UK technology magazine. It was about reasons, based on my experience, for working in the Middle East. It was based on another piece I wrote for the Career Advantage website.
I’m a bit sniffy about blogs that churn out lists – Twenty Reasons Why You Should Have Your Chihuahua Neutered, and the like. But in this case I thought it was the right format, and everybody else seems to like lists, so that’s how I wrote it.
I looked at the piece again the other day. I wanted to see if I would change any of my thoughts in the light of all that has happened in the Middle East over recent months. I found that no, I wouldn’t. The Middle East was and continues to be – for me – a great place to live and work.
But it’s not for everyone. How you find the experience – at least for a Western expatriate like me – depends on you. Your character, your expectations, your attitude towards people, society, faith, politics and business.
Many expatriates tend to form physical and mental bubbles around themselves. They look to shut out whatever they find distasteful, and concentrate on the task of making money. They will create small societies, mainly composed of like-minded people. As long as they feel safe and relatively fulfilled, they will consider that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, and they will stay for as long as it suits them.
With the coming of the Arab Spring, there will be many people who might have considered moving to the Middle East, but who may feel rather spooked about the prospect now. Especially so if they read the various foreign ministry advisory notices from countries like the US, the UK, Canada and Australia.
So I thought I would re-publish my original Ten Reasons for Working in the Middle East, and write another list that gives ten reasons why the Middle East might not be the right place for a Westerner – or anyone else for that matter – to live and work.
Here’s what I wrote about eighteen months ago:
Ten Reasons for Working in the Middle East
It’s been nearly thirty years since I first set foot in the Middle East. Looking back, I can say that getting on that plane to start the two-year contract I first signed up for was one of the best decisions of my life.
So for anyone contemplating taking the same step, let me share ten reasons based on personal experience as to why a move to the Middle East is potentially a good move at any stage of a career
Financial: This is the obvious one, of course. I moved to Saudi Arabia in my late 20’s on a contract that ended up lasting for nearly a decade. The money I earned enabled me to start a business with a partner in which, after many evolutions, peregrinations and a few sales on the way, I’m still involved today. Saudi Arabia gave me the means to break free of a lifetime working for others, and for that I’ll always be grateful.
Cultural experience: In my time in the Middle East I have worked with nationals of at least thirty countries. I have learned not only from the native cultures of the Middle East, but from everybody I have worked with – Sunni and Shiite Muslims, Hindus, Bhuddists, Zoroastrians and Taoists. I have learned to look beyond the caricatures through which the western media often presents the religion and cultures of the region, by talking to people, socialising with them and hearing their stories. I feel enriched beyond wealth by the experience.
Jumping off point: The Middle East is a perfect jumping off point for parts of the world where one might not ordinarily visit. This is perhaps less relevant today than it was 30 years ago, when flights were more expensive. But places like the Lebanon, Cyprus, Turkey, the Oman, Syria and Egypt from here are potential long weekends. Further afield, destinations like Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand become a doable seven hours flying, as opposed to a tedious 12 hours plus from the US and Europe.
Friendships: I have friends whom I met here that I have stayed in touch with for 30 years. Living and working in the Middle East creates a common bond through shared experience. It’s true that many relationships are superficial and don’t go the distance. But I have been lucky enough to meet people far and more talented and wiser than me, and they have become an enduring part of my life. This applies particularly to Arab nationals – trust and respect are not always easy to come by, but once won can lead to a friendship for life.
Professional Network: It never hurts to create a network of relationships in one of the world’s economic powerhouses. If you are involved in an international business, your work will not always touch on the Middle East, but the region will always be there as a factor. Oil and gas, regional politics, sovereign wealth funds – all have a bearing on every business in the world. It’s good to have people you can talk to in the region.
Exploration: If you have a yen for exploration beyond the usual tourist traps, the Middle East has much to offer. Roman, Greek and Byzantine ruins in the Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. Meteor craters, vast deserts and spectacular Nabatean tombs in Saudi Arabia. Tropical oases in the Oman. Spectacular diving in the Red Sea. And then, of course, Egypt. I have only scratched the surface.
Making a difference: I’m not sure if this is uppermost in the minds of many people coming to the Middle East, but suffice it to say that in many professional areas there is an opportunity to make a real difference, directly or indirectly, to people’s lives. In the 80’s I worked in civil aviation. The region didn’t have a great track record in terms of safety, and many areas were without airports. Pretty basic standards of air traffic control applied. In helping to develop the region’s infrastructure, I always felt that what I was doing was worthwhile, even if you could say after the fact that I indirectly contributed to the carbon emissions that so concern us today.
Upping your game: The phrase “taking your career to the next level” is the king of clichés. But for me it actually worked out that way. I found that in my time in the Middle East I ended up with far more responsibility than I would have had in a comparable organisation at home. I was stretched, challenged and occasionally, frayed! The skills I can directly attribute to my time in the region include working with multi-national, multinational workforces, patience, toleration, communications and political acuity. They have all served me well in my subsequent career.
International track record: Being able to cite a “difficult” region on their curriculum vitae is bound to be of benefit to a career. If you’re British and have spent three years in Germany that of course is valuable experience. But you are still working in the European Union, in an environment where best practice is roughly similar and recognisable. I suggest that experience of the Middle East, with its different cultural, social, legal and commercial norms, is a far more valuable badge of experience, matched only by the Far East. Which leads me neatly to the final reason.
Gateway to the East: The days when Bahrain and the Emirates looked primarily to Britain as a dominant trading partner, and Saudi Arabia likewise to the United States, are gone. Whether or not we are in the Eastern Century, China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and Malaysia to name but five countries, are playing a major role in the economy and business community of the region. In the Middle East you will work with or compete against companies and executives from the Far East on a much wider scale than you might, say, in a senior role in the UK or the United States. Not only will you benefit from that experience, but you might find yourself making your next career move to the Far East because of what you learned in this region. On a personal level, my understanding of the Muslim world was very helpful when I came to set up a company in Malaysia, for example.
The Middle East is a diverse, challenging, infuriating and ultimately fascinating environment. It’s not for the squeamish or the fainthearted, as you will discover when you read on. But I don’t have a single regret about the time I’ve spent in the region. I’d do it all again.
Ten Reasons Not to Work in the Middle East
This might seem like a list of negatives. All of the reasons can be so for some. It depends on your attitude towards them, and what you’re used to at home. Also, some of the reasons I quote apply to a lesser or greater extent across the region. No one country is the same, which is why generalisations about “Arabs” and “Muslims” can be misleading and dangerous. Just keep that in mind.
Heat: This is the obvious one. There are some parts where the summer temperature can get above 50 degrees. Cities like Jeddah, Manama and Dubai can also be suffocatingly humid in the summer months. Others, like Riyadh, have a dry heat that can mummify you in short order. Yes, you will have air conditioning in your accommodation and your car. But for three or four months of the year, be prepared to confine your outdoor life to the evenings, when things are cooler.
Noise: If you come from Naples or Delhi, no problem – you will encounter nothing worse in the Middle East. But many cities in the region have horrendous traffic problems – Cairo for example. So be prepared for an endless serenade of honking horns and engine noise, especially at peak times. Also be aware that in some cities, construction doesn’t stop at weekends, so don’t be surprised to find your pleasant weekend evening on the balcony punctuated with banging, crashing and grinding from the nearby building site. Finally, there are the mosques. Minarets have loudspeakers, and if you live in an area where there are many mosques, expect to be treated to simultaneous prayer calls in surround-sound. Most people get used to the sound – and listening to good muezzin can be a musical as well as a spiritual experience. But if you’re a light sleeper, you will not be amused to be woken by the early call – from 4 am in the winter, a bit later in the summer.
Pollution: Almost every city in the world is polluted to some degree. But the traffic snarl-ups in many of the big Middle East cities can cause even hardy smokers like me to gasp like a fish out of water from time to time. Then there is the dust. Cities in the throes of construction booms can throw up all kinds of nasty stuff. And especially in the Gulf, you will encounter sandstorms that leave a thin suspension of dust in the atmosphere for days after the storm. So if you’re prone to asthma, as many locals are, factor this into your decision.
Bureaucracy: Many governments in the Middle East are massively overstaffed. There are a number of reasons for this. More recently because creating more government jobs is an easy was to address pressing unemployment problems. Traditionally, because many governments still adhere to practices handed down from the Ottoman Empire and – as a Brit, I hate to say it – the civil service created by the British Raj in India. So getting residence permits, driving licences and a host of other essential pieces of paper can be a long drawn out and painful process. Things are getting better. Many countries – especially Bahrain and to a lesser extent Saudi Arabia, have embraced e-government. But if you find it hard to tolerate bureaucracy in your home country, what you might encounter in the Middle East will do your blood pressure no favours.
Status: It’s always worth remembering that your status in the country you settle in is that of a guest. You will usually be treated with great courtesy and respect when you come to work in the Middle East – although less so the lower you are down the food chain. But if you wander around barking like a memsahib, you are liable to be reminded that you are a guest, and warned not to overstep the bounds of hospitality. So if you are the sort of person who is inclined to broadcast your discontent omnidirectionally, you may encounter problems. After all, it’s their country, not yours.
Rights: This is a tough one. In some countries, you will hear of – or even witness – abuses of human rights that might offend you. They may be casual acts by individuals, or they may be tacitly sanctioned from on high. Before you come to the Middle East, you should carefully consider your own moral position. You may determine that the greater good in what you have been hired to do transcends your personal reservations about the freedoms and rights accorded to citizens of the country. Equally, you might shut your eyes and determine not to care. By and large, your personal rights under the law will the same as those of citizens. But laws are not always evenly applied. And don’t expect to have a voice on national political issues, especially where you are tempted to side with one political faction or another. The recent painful experience of Bahrain shows why.
Equality: Another tough one. The issue of women’s rights, opportunities and place in society – especially in Saudi Arabia – has been so widely debated that I’m not going to discuss it here. Be aware that the Middle East is not a level playing field in many ways. There is discrimination on grounds of ethnicity – not just by locals against expatriates, by the way, but between locals themselves and between different ethnic groups within the expatriate communities – and faith. If you come to work in the wealthy economies of the Gulf and Saudi Arabia, you will need to accept that you are the hired hand, and that standards expected from you may differ from those applied to the local workforce. Not officially of course, but in reality. If you can’t cope with that without resentment, you might find things tough.
Customer Service: In the Middle East, this is very varied. Expect to be delighted one day, and pitched into a stupor of disbelief the next. My coping mechanism is to laugh, and write about my experiences. There are lots of reasons why customer service has its awful moments. Poor management, weak process, cultural inhibitions and lack of training. Most people want to please, but not necessarily in the way you want. But this is a worldwide issue, so I’d offer the same advice for many countries beyond the Middle East: if you’re inclined to get impatient to the point of apoplexy, stay at home. At least there you will understand the consequences of your rage.
Safety: No beating about the bush – there are unsafe areas across the region, both within cities and without. As there are in Rio, Moscow, London and Los Angeles. The important thing to consider is how you cope with fear of the unknown. In every city you can quickly find out where the unsafe areas are, and as you experience grows you can temper the advice with your own experience and common sense. But if you’re the sort of person who fears gremlins at every corner – like the guy I once drove from Riyadh to Damman, who was reluctant to get out of the car at a desert gas station in case someone was waiting to shoot him – then perhaps you should ask yourself if the Middle East is not a step too far.
Tolerance: As the people of the former Yugoslavia, Ireland and Rwanda know, attitudes that lurk in the back of people’s minds for decades and even centuries have a habit of bursting to the surface at moments of stress and discord. All eyes have been on the Middle East in recent times, and if you keep a close eye on the conventional and social media, you will easily find stories of intolerance and factionalism on a daily basis. But always remember that the people of Middle East have the same needs and desires as most of us – to live in safety and peace with our fellow human beings.
Yes, there are bad people doing and saying bad things. But most countries in this region are not war zones, and even though it can be hard to ignore some of what many Westerners see as the negative aspects of societies in this region, tolerance and respect for difference is a two-way process. If you go to a foreign country – on holiday perhaps – and find it hard to see the good in that country because of its many imperfections, perhaps that is an indicator that you will also struggle in the Middle East.
Just be aware that there are many good people in this region. If you reach out, you will find them. If you never try, you will not know what you are missing.
A story in yesterday’s Gulf Daily News caused me to raise my eyebrows a little.
Entitled Top cleric condemns Iranian interference, the article provides excerpts of an interview that Saudi Grand Mufti Shaikh Abdulaziz Al Ashaikh gave to a local newspaper.
Saudi Arabia’s top cleric has accused Iran of interfering in the internal affairs of GCC countries and attacked its “hypocrisy and deception”.
“A little is known about the Safavids and their doctrine. They are known for their black history laden with hatred to Islam and Sunnis,” Grand Mufti Shaikh Abdulaziz Al Shaikh told Jeddah-based Okaz newspaper.
“We must guard against their (Iranian) intrigues and we have to be wary of them and be careful of their deceits and not fall for their claims about Islam, which are all hypocrisy and deception,” he said.
He condemned “Iranian interventions” in the GCC and described Iranians as “Zoroastrians” – followers of the pre-Islamic Persian religion.
Gulf countries have accused Iran of interfering in their affairs after Tehran objected to the deployment of GCC Peninsula Shield troops to Bahrain.”
I am at a disadvantage in commenting on the Shaikh’s remarks given that I have not seen the original, which is in Arabic, and I am reliant upon the excerpts provided above.
But if I understand him correctly, he is associating the present Iranian regime with the Persian Safavid dynasty that came to an end in 1736. The Safavids established Shia Islam as the state religion, and forcibly converted all Sunnis within their domain, which perhaps explains the Shaikh’s reference to their “black history”. The use of the word black, which is a colour associated with Shia Islam, is possibly not accidental.
It is not surprising that he condemned what he described as Iranian interventions. By doing this he is adding his voice to those of many leading figures within both Saudi Arabia and Bahrain who are deeply concerned at what they see as Iran’s complicity in recent disturbances.
But what did surprise me was his description of Iranians as Zoroastrians. There are undoubtedly some Zoroastrians still in Iran, but the majority of the population is Shia Muslim. How the average Iranian would feel about being described as a follower of Azhura Mazda, I wouldn’t care to speculate.
I wonder how the current animus against Iran is likely to affect the carefully nurtured spirit of inter-faith dialogue so energetically promoted by King Abdullah. His Majesty undoubtedly recognises the difference between the Iranian regime and the ordinary people it governs. Do the remarks of the Shaikh – who is an important participant in the dialogue initiative – signal that inter-faith dialogue takes second place to the political imperatives of the moment?
What does it take to write a book on a subject as big as the Atlantic Ocean? Do you just sit in your study, do a bit of web surfing, talk to a few people on the phone, maybe meet a few, and then churn out four hundred and fifty nine pages of prose with a few photos thrown in?
Maybe. But I suspect that the end product might not have much of an author’s heart in it. Reading Simon Winchester’s book Atlantic – A Vast Ocean of a Million Stories reminded me that to write on a subject so substantial requires more than a little effort.
Winchester took eighteen months to write and research Atlantic, and another four to edit it. In the process, he went to Morocco, Brazil, Argentina, Newfoundland, Monte Carlo, Namibia, Norway, St Helena, Greenland, Tristan Da Cunha, Bermuda and a number of other islands. He acknowledges assistance from over fifty people, and quotes over two hundred reference sources – books and academic papers. And from all that effort, we get a book that retails on Amazon for ten US dollars.
Reading the book over a few weeks felt similar to what I imagine might be the experience of crossing the ocean by sail for the first time. The anticipation of the journey, slow periods of contemplation, encounters with the unexpected, passages of frenetic activity, ending with a race towards harbour with a brisk following wind.
Atlantic is about man’s relationship with the ocean from ancient times to the present day. Winchester talks about early hominids who first lived by the sea 150,000 years ago, and about the Phoenician traders who ventured timidly beyond the Rock of Gibraltar in search of the murex snails that yielded the purple dye much prized by the Mediterranean elite. About the Vikings who made the first crossings to Newfoundland, and about the explorers of Spain and Portugal who discovered the “New World” and realised that the Atlantic was not a sea that circled the earth, but a vast ocean with definable limits.
He writes about the rules of the sea and those who broke them – privateers and pirates. About the ocean as a barrier to commerce, slowly overcome by sail, steam and finally vast container ships ploughing through the waters as airliners criss-cross the sky above. About communications between old world and new, and about the ocean of a place of war.
He discusses its spoiling by human hands that dump radioactive materials in its trenches, and allow noxious chemicals to flow into it from the rivers. Hands that have scraped the fish from its floor until they are nearly extinct, and reduced the whale population to an endangered remnant.
He talks about ice melt, rising sea levels and their effect on our coastlines and cities, about the anatomy of hurricanes and the uncertainty of outcomes from global warming.
And finally he describes the Atlantic’s destiny – to be obliterated in a coming together of the continents in 150 million years’ time. A moment when the Isla Los Estados lighthouse at the tip of South America collides with the Raffles Lighthouse in Singapore – should a single brick of those structures survive the long passage of time.
Occasionally Atlantic throws up human and biological stories that surprise and amaze.
About Chaim Weizmann, whose discovery of a more efficient way of manufacturing acetone, a key ingredient of cordite. His contribution to the British naval effort in World War One gave Weizmann, an ardent Zionist, an influential place in the discussions that produced the Balfour Declaration – a political settlement that eventually led to the creation of the State of Israel.
And the story of the humble Prochlorococcus, a tiny bacterium a few microns across that was discovered in 1986. It turns out to be the most abundant living creature on earth, and is believed to produce one fifth of the world’s atmospheric oxygen.
There are people who like their books to have a dominant structure and a linear narrative. Atlantic is perhaps not for them. It does have a structure, but not so rigid that it prevents Winchester from sailing off into passages of anecdote and sometimes meditation.
As a child I used to swim in the Atlantic waves off Cornwall, and sail in the bays of North Wales. For many years we used to holiday at Poldhu Cove, the Cornish headland where Guglielmo Marconi sent radio signals across the ocean for the first time. I used to stand on the wind-swept headland and look out to sea, imagining America thousands of miles away. Since then, I have encountered the Atlantic in many of its forms – from the coasts of Europe, Africa and America.
I was hoping that Simon Winchester’s book would deepen my appreciation of that magnificent ocean, and he did not disappoint.
The social and political implications of immigration are currently attracting considerable media attention in two very different G20 nations – Britain and Saudi Arabia.
In the UK, Prime Minister David Cameron delivered a major speech on the subject in the run-up to the forthcoming municipal elections. He said that between 1997 and 2009 – during which time the previous government was in office – 2.2 million more people came to live in the UK than left it. He spoke about the problems that this level of net immigration brought with it – particularly, difficulties in maintaining social cohesion.
He announced a member of measures designed to reduce net immigration to tens of thousands rather than the hundreds of thousands of previous years. Measures include tightening the criteria for student visas and stamping out abuses of the points-based work visa system designed to fill genuine skills gaps in the workplace.
He also signalled the government’s determination to reform the welfare system, stating that “migrants are filling gaps in the labour market left wide open by a welfare system that for years has paid British people not to work”.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia is poised to announce new plans to hasten the replacement of foreign workers with Saudis. Britain’s eye-watering net immigration figures are a relatively new phenomenon. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, has long depended on foreign workers not only for its rapid development but also to carry out menial jobs that its citizens are reluctant to take.
Previous Saudization initiatives have met with limited success. In recent years a population explosion has resulted in very high levels of youth unemployment. Unemployment has, in turn, led to social problems – increased drug abuse, petty crime and the radicalisation of many young people who feel that that their lives have no meaning. Many young Saudis also find it difficult to find affordable housing, get married and raise families.
While David Cameron’s government is seeking to reduce immigration by reforming the UK’s social welfare system, and making it less attractive for people to rely on benefits rather than work, the Saudi government is boosting its social safety net.
It has introduced unemployment benefits and announced massive affordable housing projects. It has also ramped up its spending on education – both on state education and by paying for yet more students to study at foreign universities. All up, the new measures announced this year will cost the state in excess of $37 billion.
As a side issue, Cameron’s measures may have an unintended impact on the Saudis. There are many thousands of Saudis studying at UK universities. A number of them come to the UK for a preparatory year that enables them to meet the entry requirements set by the universities. The Saudi government requires single female students to be accompanies by a guardian – typically a family member. Since one of Cameron’s objectives is to reduce the amount of relatives and dependents accompanying the students – he stated, for example, that family visas will not be available for students below postgraduate level – whether the new visa regulations result in less Saudis studying in the UK remains to be seen. Should this be the case, expect howls of protest by UK universities that rely increasingly on fees from foreign students.
So while the United Kingdom is looking to cut back on its welfare system, the Saudis are increasing theirs. There are many reasons why they would want to do this. Chief amongst them is to pre-empt the kind of unrest seen elsewhere in the Middle East. But introducing monthly payments for unemployed young Saudis certainly increases the challenge of getting them into work, and of reducing the eight million-strong foreign workforce.
There is another demographic issue that faces the Saudis. Today’s Arab News runs an article about foreign workers who were born in the Kingdom. In Saudi Arabia-born expats face an identity crisis, Ibrahim Naffee estimates that there are up 800,000 workers and dependents in this situation. Of these up to 300,000 could be third-generation expatriates.
These are people who see Saudi Arabia as home, and yet do not have the rights of citizens. They grew up in the Saudi education system, speak like Saudis and worship in the mosques alongside Saudis. But their presence depends on the continuing renewal of their residence visas, and at any time they can be sent back to countries of origin that are, in their eyes, foreign.
Theoretically, it would be straightforward for the Saudis to grant second and third-generation expatriates citizenship. Resulting increases in social costs would be relatively affordable. And by naturalising nearly a million residents, you could take the cynical view that at a stroke they would dramatically improve their Saudisation levels.
Yet there would most likely be social problems. Among Saudis who trace their ancestry from the original tribal inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula – particularly those from the Najd, the homeland of the Saudi Royal family – there has always been an undercurrent of prejudice against nationals of foreign origin, no matter how far back those origins go.
The Hejaz – the Western region of the Kingdom that encompasses Jeddah, Makkah and Madinah – has traditionally welcomed immigrants. Over centuries, many who came for the annual pilgrimage to Makkah never left. And many of the merchant families that grew their businesses in the Hejaz before its incorporation into the Kingdom and in its early days are among the most wealthy and prominent businessmen today. The Al Rajhi, Mahfooz and Bin Laden families originally came from Yemen. The Alirezas from Persia, the Pharaons from Syria.
But these families, and hundreds like them, were integrated into local society before the massive influx of immigration that took place from the 1970s onwards. Whether the current citizenry of Saudi Arabia would welcome hundreds of thousands of new Saudis – many of them of South Asian origin – is questionable.
And should Saudi Arabia in the future introduce a greater level of electoral democracy, there are bound to be concerns about the influence that sizeable ethnic minorities could exert on the political process.
I don’t see this as exclusively a Saudi issue. Some of the other oil-rich Arab states have an even higher proportion of foreign workers. Although Qatar and the UAE started their development programmes later than the Kingdom, over time they could have second and third generation foreign workers on whom they will depend, but who do not have the rights of citizenship.
It is quite possible that these workers will come to resent their status and start pushing to become nationals of the countries where they were born and grew up. One only has to look at the concern among some quarters in Bahrain over the naturalisation of large numbers of foreigners in the past twenty years to see that there are many nationals of other Gulf countries who could object to what they might view as the dilution of their birthright.
In Britain, as in some parts of the Middle East, we have a long tradition of absorbing immigrants who have come to the country both for economic reasons and to escape persecution elsewhere. David Cameron believes that we have reached the limit of our capacity, and that we need urgent action to address the problem.
But even the sizeable influx of people into Britain in recent years pales in comparison with immigration into the GCC states. Add to the mix pressure both on the borders of the European Union and the GCC from poorer populations in neighbouring countries, and you can predict with confidence that immigration will be high on the agenda in both regions for years to come.
The subject of unpaid work experience has generated a bit of media steam in the UK lately. When Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, made some sanctimonious noises about the practice of unpaid internships being dished out through personal connections of parents rather than merit, the fun began.
The debate seems to have been on two levels. First, whether it is right for organisations to take on interns without paying them the minimum wage. And second, whether the use of patronage is giving the offspring of the wealthy and well-connected an advantage in the foothills of their careers.
What might have been a fairly humdrum story was elevated to unexpected heights when Clegg revealed that he had a helping hand when his Dad, a banker, had a word in the ear of a friend, and young Nick ended up on a work placement with a Finnish bank. At which point, ever grateful for the opportunity to kick poor Clegg, a number of newspapers gleefully accused him of hypocrisy. The Times even ran a cartoon of him with his head up his backside – not a portrait that would be well received by governments in the Middle East, where I reside.
Before I pitch into the debate, let me disclose a couple of my shameful secrets, just so that you can see that I have a track record on the issue.
I also once did a work placement arranged by my father. But it was not in the birch-panelled boardroom of a Finnish bank. I ended up in an utterly unremarkable solicitor’s office in the equally unremarkable town of Walsall. It was the kind of law firm that eked a living out of property and death – in other words, handling real estate transactions and processing people’s wills. A dry and dusty place, where I spent two weeks shuffling paper files from one desk to another. About as far from the setting for a John Grisham novel as a leaky tramp steamer is from a Russian oligarch’s gin palace.
The job was only rivalled for tedium by the weeks I used to spend during college holidays watching a machine feeding marshmallows into plastic bags at Cadburys. Two of the enduring mysteries of my life are why the experience with Vaillant & Co didn’t put me off a career in law, and why working in a chocolate factory didn’t stunt for ever my liking for chocolate. The law got its comeuppance later, but I still gorge on chocolate from time to time.
When my one of my daughters was of a similar age, I used what little influence I had to get my eldest daughter some paid work experience with a recruitment firm in which I had an interest. She spent a few weeks doing the modern equivalent of shuffling papers – data entry. I never found out how useful she was to them. She was at the grunting stage, and the associate I prevailed upon to employ her described her as a “character”, which reminds me of one of those ambivalent job testimonials that contain words like “Mr Ramsbottom will be remembered by all who worked with him”.
So I am one of those wicked people who has used and benefited from personal influence in the job market. And I would do it again should the opportunity arise. As would millions of Mums and Dads around the world anxious to give their beloved offspring a lift. But I suspect that the vast majority of internships, work experience placements and holiday jobs – call them what you will – contribute little to the development of young careers.
Most of them, especially in the West, are encouraged by parents for social and economic reasons. Anything is better than seeing your children mooning around the house during school and college holidays, complaining of having no money and burying themselves in Facebook and video games. Get them out working, get them to appreciate the value of money, give them something constructive to do, for God’s sake!
And the kids themselves, much as they appreciate the extra cash, take delight in moaning to their mates about the boring job they’re doing. As I did.
Moving to the two issues in hand, is it right for companies and political parties to take on unpaid help? It depends. Take political internships. There’s a big difference between a Member of Parliament asking a young person to spend six months or a year working in their office for free, carrying out research and getting involved in the business of Parliament, and recruiting a volunteer to man the phones and walk the streets in an election campaign. In the former case, the intern is providing a service that would otherwise need to be carried out by a paid employee. In an election, however, there is an element of idealism and volunteer spirit that is often entirely divorced from the business of gaining work experience.
Within companies, a four-week work experience stint rarely does much beyond give the intern a feeling for the industry in which they are working. There is not much time and even less motive for a company to train an intern to do anything other than fairly mundane and deskilled work. Responsible companies will make the time of their staff to available to mentor the intern, and will perhaps allow them to shadow key staff. That takes resources and commitment, not to mention space and facilities.
But that’s a very different situation from the one my daughter experienced when she lost her job in an interior design company. She went because a couple of ambitious parents offered to fund their daughter to work for the company unpaid for a year.
From the parent’s point of view, you could argue that a year’s experience in a dream job might be a better investment than funding their daughter through a Master’s degree. And for the daughter, who doesn’t care where the money’s coming from, it’s a dream start to a career, provided she has the talent and drive to make use of the experience.
I do believe that in the West there are so many different circumstances under which people work for free that it would be almost impossible introduce regulation beyond what already exists. It would also be undesirable. I’ve long thought that people in work should look at themselves as personal corporations. They should not expect that anyone else should look out for them as of right. Whether we chose to work in the private sector, where job security is never a given, or in government, where there is a greater chance of a job for life, is our decision. And if we chose to work for free as an investment in our personal corporations – also known as careers – I don’t see the difference doing that and a company investing in its future.
Where legislation needs to draw a line is where working for free becomes a compulsory activity – people trafficking, indentured labour and slavery. On the other side of that line, we need to place a little more trust in the morality of our society, in our ability speak out about malpractice and in the willingness of individuals to walk away from exploitation.
Concerning the issue of patronage, it’s unrealistic to believe that you will ever eliminate nepotism or the use of influence to benefit family, friends and close-knit groups. Here in the Middle East, where the extended family is much more the key object of loyalty than in the West, the idea that you should not use your influence to benefit family members would be unthinkable. And in societies where families live closer to the edge of survival, the prosperity of one family member is often critical to the prosperity of all.
In Britain, where the furore began, the debate is in the context of a belief that it is becoming harder for those not from a privileged background to break into some of the most lucrative and powerful professions. The UK Sunday Times quotes a 2009 report stating that whereas 7% of the population is privately educated, 70% of High Court Judges, 68% of top lawyers, 54% of FTSE CEOs, 54% of top journalists and 51% of top doctors went to private schools.
Be that as it may, whether Daddy’s efforts load the dice in favour of his son and daughter is a different matter altogether. There are very few organisations in which the well-connected but untalented prosper. So an interview, introduction or work placement arranged by a parent is absolutely no guarantee of success. Yes, it might result in a job, but only if the beneficiary can prove they are up to it. And the first job is no guarantee of long-term success, especially if a person has talent, but not drive and motivation.
Of course there are exceptions. Family business owners might groom little Johnny to run the company even if he is a bit dull in the eyes of everyone else. This is one of the reasons why second-generation family businesses sometimes fail.
Far more pernicious than patronage is desire of many families to shape the future of their kids. In the Middle East, this has led to generations who have been led to believe that the only acceptable career is behind a desk “managing” others – preferably in the government, where they work perhaps six hours a day and find it hard to get fired even if they are supremely untalented.
In the UK, the steely determination – especially among families of Asian origin – that their sons and daughters should become doctors, lawyers or accountants has led to many a fractured relationship when the object of this family pressure really wants to be a writer, musician or supermarket manager.
So once again, I suggest that, keen as some legislators might be to make their mark and regulate what we have for breakfast every morning, they should leave well alone. Otherwise we might find ourselves banning ivy league fraternities, Masonic lodges, parent-teacher associations, golf club committees and ladies who lunch. In fact, just about every setting in which people look for a back to scratch.
As in the case of unpaid work, just about everywhere in the world there is a legal line beyond which patronage becomes corruption. Bribing a government official to give little Johnny a job crosses that line. So does persuading a teacher to alter a son or daughter’s grades, or prevailing upon a friendly HR manager to skew the selection criteria in favour of a relative. The fact that some societies are better at dealing with corruption than others doesn’t alter the line itself.
Rather than worry about a tiny elite that gets a glimpse of a future career thanks to Daddy’s connections, we would be far better off- as Eleanor Mills of the Sunday Times points out – working out how to level the educational playing field. We need to create an equality of education opportunity, so that the top universities do not come under pressure to exercise positively discrimination in favour of kids educated by the state.
As Peter Lampl of the Sutton Trust was quoted as saying in Mills’s article, “there are 100,000 kids so poor that the state subsidises their lunch, yet only 40 of them end up at Oxbridge. That’s fewer than go from just one of our top public (meaning private, SR) schools. That’s got to change.”
Here in the Middle East, the gap between public and private education is even wider. It is only mitigated by policies of many governments – especially in the GCC – to send large number of kids abroad for their tertiary education, and by an almost industrial attitude to getting young nationals into jobs regardless of the quality of their education or their suitability for the work. But that’s another discussion altogether.
So it’s fine to enjoy the discomfiture of a prominent politician – after all, that’s what they’re there for, isn’t it? But let’s not get into a froth about issues that are well down the strategic scale, and concentrate on what really matters: education.
It was their habit to crucify unsuccessful generals. In times of crisis they would sacrifice children. The rival that eventually destroyed them portrayed them as the antithesis of a virtuous people – cruel, rapacious and deceitful. They and their rival worshipped many of the same gods, but under different names
You could describe the hundred-year struggle between the Carthage and Rome as an ancient clash of civilisations. Carthage lost. Their city was razed to the ground and their people slaughtered or enslaved. And since the winners went on to colonise much of the known world – from Britain to Persia – it was inevitable that their greatest foe would end up in the victor’s history as the bad guy.
Yet Carthage, originally a colony of the great Phoenician city of Tyre, was no failed civilisation. It flourished for six hundred years, and its cultural and historical legacy is with us today.
As sea-going merchants, the Phoenicians were responsible for cross-cultural pollination throughout the Mediterranean. They brought precious metals from Spain, the much-prized purple dye from as far away as Cadiz on the Atlantic coast of Spain. They traded in wine, olive oil, pottery and luxury goods from Greece and Italy. Their craftsmen created their own artefacts, drawing on cultural influences from all over their trading empire.
Phoenician merchants were the first Mediterranean seafarers to venture into the Atlantic Ocean. They are believed to have sailed as far as Nigeria and Southern England in search of raw materials to sustain their trade.
Carthage Must Be Destroyed, written by the classical historian Richard Miles, is an erudite but compelling account of the contest between Carthage and Rome. Miles looks not only at the political and military conflict, but at the efforts of both sides to position themselves on the right side of myth and history – and particularly as the divinely favoured nation.
When the wars with Rome began , Carthage was the dominant naval power in the region. The Carthaginians had taken the trireme – the standard naval warship of the age – and improved it. And in order to fight them, Rome, for the first time, built its own fleet.
The rivalry between the two nations was both territorial and commercial. Carthage was a city of 700,000 inhabitants at the time of its final downfall. It was strategically placed on the North African coast – near the present-day Tunis – to trade throughout the Mediterranean. It saw overseas territories as sources of food and raw materials. It established spheres of interest and control in Sicily, Sardinia, Spain and North Africa. To protect its commercial interests it would establish fortified settlements in each area. In Sicily, it bumped up against the powerful Greek city states such as Syracuse whose rulers also sought to extend their dominion over the island.
Meanwhile, as Rome sought to extend its control over the rest of Italy, and cast envious eyes on Sicily, its relationship with Carthage moved from co-existence to competition, and finally to war. In each of its wars with Carthage, Rome ended up the winner. Yet during the second war, Hannibal, Carthage’s greatest general, carried out the near-impossible task of crossing the Alps with his army. He then proceeded to bring Rome to its knees in a series of stunning military victories. The greatest of these was at Cannae, where he used tactics still taught in military colleges today to defeat a much larger Roman army. In one afternoon, Hannibal left 70,000 Romans dead on the battlefield – a casualty count on a single day rarely rivalled until the mechanised slaughter of the Battle of the Somme in 1916.
For a number of reasons Hannibal stopped short of delivering the coup de grace. His long Italian campaign eventually petered out, and finally, a Roman general of equal talent, Publius Cornelius Scipio, snuffed out the threat by taking the war to Carthage – thus forcing Hannibal to return to Africa, and inflicting a crushing defeat on him at the Battle of Zama in 202 BC. Through dogged determination and refusal to conform to the conventions of ancient war, Rome prevailed. And fifty years later, it found a strong enough pretext to destroy Carthage altogether.
There are many accounts, both ancient and modern, of the struggle between Rome and Carthage. What makes Miles’s book different is his attempt to free Carthage from the straightjacket of the victor’s history.
Very little remains of Carthaginian literature. What we have comes to us second-hand through Roman and Greek voices. But archaeological discoveries – especially in recent years – have shown us much more of their vibrant culture. Superb craftsmen, eclectic architects and unrivalled traders, the Carthaginians and their Phoenician brothers left their imprint across the Mediterranean. Miles argues that by pacifiying large areas of the Mediterranean coast, they made it far easier for Rome to assimilate North Africa and Spain into its burgeoning empire.
Although the standard Roman narrative portrays Carthage as the negative image of Rome, there is archaeological evidence of a Phoenician presence in Rome itself from the earliest days of the city – an inconvenient truth that Rome’s spin doctors chose to bury.
Aside from the political and military narrative, a central theme of Miles’s book is the efforts of both sides to claim the divine high ground. Heracles, as he was known to the Greeks – Hercules to the Romans and Melqart to the Carthaginians – and goddesses such as the Roman Juno and Venus, and the Carthaginian Astarte, consort of Melqart, were protagonists in a propaganda war waged through literature, artistic symbolism and coinage by the rivals. Each side sought to demoralise the other by claiming divine approval. And each used mythology to establish a belief among their peoples of the manifest destiny of their nations.
Carthage Must Be Destroyed is full of characters with qualities that we would recognise today. Hannibal’s mastery of psychological warfare. Ambitious politicians and generals from mainland Greece, Sicily and the two protagonists – manipulating, playing off competing factions, lying, betraying and undermining those whom they perceived were gaining too much power. The implacable hatred of Cato the Elder, to whom history credits the phrase “Carthago delenda est”, the Latin version of the book’s title – words he would repeat at the end of every speech he gave, regardless of whether or not Carthage was the subject.
When the death struggle was finally over, Roman poets and historians continued to define their civilisation on a canvas haunted by the ghost of Carthage.
Here in the Middle East, the legacy of Carthage and the Phoenicians is with us today. The ancient city of Tyre can still be found in modern Lebanon along with a host of other traces of Phoenician culture. The wit, commercial acumen and ingenuity for which the Phoenicians were famed, is with us still today in the modern Lebanese people.
And across the Middle East, sadly, groups of believers still use their brand of faith as a means to assert their moral supremacy over those who worship the same god, and over those who worship the same god by other names.
Carthage Must Be Destroyed left me wanting to play the “what if” game. If the Carthaginians had prevailed, would they have created a Mediterranean empire as Rome did? Probably not. Would their cultural influence in Europe have been more lasting? Probably.
It’s even possible to imagine that the most influential language in Western Europe, instead of Latin, might have been a tongue closer to Arabic. And that therefore the world today would be speaking a very different language as its method of international communication.
There are times when newspapers seem to be edited by people totally devoid of a sense of irony. Yesterday’s Sunday Times – my favourite British Sunday newspaper – leads on the front page with two stories of hardship.
In the main story, Hala Jaber reports from Misrata on the cost of Gaddafi’s bombardment of the city. She tells of a desperate humanitarian crisis in which children have borne the brunt – of kids in an orphanage cowering in a basement, and of a surgeon’s unsuccessful attempt to save two sisters struck by bullets in their parents’car.
In the second story, The Sunday Times reports that according to the Centre for Economic and Business Research, families in Britain are “facing the biggest peacetime squeeze on their finances since 1921”. The report goes on to say that average household disposable incomes are set to decline by 2%.
So as we Brits tucked into our breakfasts yesterday morning, we were asked to feel compassion for a city where babies are dying, and then to consider the terrible news that we might have to cut back on our foreign holidays this year.
We could look at things in a different way. We could celebrate the fact that at in no year in peacetime has our disposable income declined by more than 2%, and that in fact during most of those years our income has grown. We could also remember the story most of us learned at school about the Pharaoh’s dream of seven fat years following seven lean ones. Whatever we British have been through over the past three years hardly compares with rivers of blood, plagues of locusts and the various other disasters that visited themselves upon the hapless Egyptians.
And when we leave a couple of slices of toast uneaten, we could remember when our parents, teachers or dinner ladies told us to “think of the starving millions”.
Of course those statistics for Britain don’t tell the whole story. There will be many people who will suffer far more than a 2% loss in disposable income. There is and will continue to be real hardship for people who have lost their jobs and perhaps their homes as well.
But occasionally the juxtaposition of two stories – intentional or otherwise – reminds us that countries like Britain sit much further from the brink of disintegration than many nations in whose affairs we take it upon ourselves to become involved. And a measure of the space between our national perspective and that of other nations close to the edge of disaster – man-made or otherwise – is the widely held opinion that charity begins at home.
The UK tabloids have been complaining about the aid programmes that Britain is funding for programmes in countries like Pakistan, Ghana and Nigeria. Why? Because at home we are being asked to sacrifice a few libraries, hospital wards and drug rehabilitation services.
It’s been about seventy years since Britain faced a clear and present threat to its entire fabric as a nation. A few of us will remember what it was like to be bombed on a daily basis, and to wait in fear for a German invasion force to come across the English Channel.
It’s about fifty years since we and just about every other country in the developed world faced obliteration in a nuclear holocaust as Kennedy and Khrushchev faced off over missiles in Cuba.
It seems to me that many members of today’s economically active generations – who have never experienced physical danger and existential threat on the scale known to their parents and grandparents – view the world only in terms of how events will affect them personally.
And Britain is not alone in this. My business partner in the US told me the other day that the main coverage of the Japanese crisis in recent days consisted of acres of column inches about the infinitesimal rise in levels of radioactive iodine identified on the East Coast – a rise that is a million miles away from being a public health concern.
If we in Britain care as much today about a 2% personal haircut as we do about the suffering in Libya and the diversion of a tiny slice of our taxes to help people who face oblivion every day, isn’t it a sad reflection of how disconnected many of us have become from realities beyond our doorsteps?
And doesn’t that explain why we react with surprise when those realities come back and bite us in the form of oil price increases, international terrorism and economic migration?
Apologies are a currency used for many purposes.
We apologise when strictly speaking there is no need to do so – when we get in someone’s way for a millisecond. We apologise as a rhetorical device: “excuse me? Just what do you think you’re doing?”. We apologise when we’ve transgressed, not because we’re sorry, but because there’s the chance we’ll escape punishment by doing so – though it didn’t work out that way for Wayne Rooney after he swore to camera during a recent Manchester United match.
And sometimes we apologise because we’re genuinely sorry for something we said, did, or didn’t do. The consequence of the genuine apology is often some form of reparation. A penance after confession, if you will. Or at least a change of attitude.
It’s striking that as individuals we go around apologising every day for big things and small, yet when we cease to be individuals and speak as representatives of groups of people, companies and governments, our instinct is to clam up.
Collectively, we often don’t say sorry because someone might sue us or not vote for us. Many of us live by the old dictum “never explain, never apologise”. We break that rule when it’s politically expedient, and usually when there’s no downside, or when there’s a substantial upside.
Some societies have a ritual for apology. In Japan, the depth of the bow is a deeply significant indicator of the level of contrition. Less often in modern Japan than in earlier times, when the deepest bow is not enough, the contrite resort to suicide.
The other day David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, was addressing an audience of students in Islamabad. He was asked how Britain could help to end the row over Kashmir.
“I don’t want to try to insert Britain in some leading role where, as with so many of the world’s problems, we are responsible for the issue in the first place,” The Daily Telegraph quoted Cameron as replying.
Strictly speaking, his words do not constitute an apology – more a statement of history as he sees it. But the day after the PM’s speech, Peter Oborne, the Telegraph columnist, waded in with an attack on Cameron for even hinting at an apology. In his article, Sorry, but it’s not right to apologise, Oborne provided a number of reasons why politicians – and in this case Cameron – should not apologise for the past.
He considers that Cameron, rather than taking the blame on Britain’s behalf for the Kashmir stand-off, should be reminding Pakistan of all the good things that came to Pakistan from British rule: democracy, roads, irrigation systems, the English language and – wait for it –cricket! His list reminded me of the “What did the Romans…” scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian, hence the title.
He goes on to say that apologies for events in the distant past are meaningless, and worse, that they encourage a culture of victimhood.
He claims that Cameron is following in Tony Blair’s footsteps. Blair, he says “has little or no sense of British history and institutions”. Two of Blair’s famous apologies were for the Irish famine in 1848, and Britain’s role in the slave trade. Oborne makes the point that we were the first major power to abolish slavery, and thereafter used our navy to pursue slave traders. He castigates Cameron for referring to our role in the Second World War as that of a junior partner, when we stood alone against Germany for two years.
He then takes a snide dig at Cameron’s and his Labour opposite number Ed Miliband’s Oxford education, describing their Philosphy, Politics and Economics degrees as “notorious for skimming the surface of understanding and historical knowledge” – as if a degree from Oxford twenty five years ago has any bearing on either leader’s fitness for office. Oborne is a Cambridge man, by the way.
He admits that our colonial record had some patchy moments, bemoans the tendency of modern politicians to come up with negative interpretations of our history, and argues that our role in many of the great events of the past hundred years has been peripheral, but by no means negative. He praises us for our stand against the Nazis, and for handing over our empire “with good natured and civilised ease”
And he finishes by saying that Cameron needs an urgent lesson in patriotism.
Ho hum. Peter Oborne is always good value, whether or not you agree with his views. He made friends among Muslims by claiming in a 2008 TV programme that British Muslims are being demonised. In 2009 he didn’t endear himself to the pro-Israel lobby in the UK by claiming that they exert an undue political influence on the British media and politicians, and that their sources of funding are opaque, to say the least – accusations more often levelled at their counterparts in the USA.
Although he writes for a newspaper that politically is to the right of centre, he is no Tory hack. But in his rationale for savaging Cameron, I don’t believe his arguments hold water, and I suspect that he is over-influenced by the Historian’s Union, who would prefer that our politicians left history to the historians. I suppose they would show some grudging respect to Churchill, who published a very successful History of the English Speaking Peoples, and even managed the feat without the benefit of a university degree!
Even If we accept that there is no purpose in apologising for events of the distant past, I would argue that the Partition of 1948 is not that distant an event. For me, the issue is not that Cameron apologises – it’s that all the other short-sighted, bigoted, and negligent contributors to the plight of Pakistan in general, and Kashmir in particular, do not also apologise. Because if they did, there would be a far better chance of a peaceful future for the region. Politicians, particularly those who are personally and politically insecure, don’t do humility very well. A bit more of that precious quality in South Asia would go a long way.
As for Oborne’s comments on the slave trade, well yes, we did make it illegal in 1807, but not before we did jolly nicely out of it for a century and a half. Go to Bristol to see the prosperity that the sugar-slave trade business brought to that city. Or to Lancashire, where mill owners were still spinning cotton picked by slaves in America way after the abolition of slavery on our turf.
And whatever the complexities of the Irish potato famine, the fact remains that the warehouses of Dublin were stocked with foodstuffs destined for the British mainland while families were starving in Connemara and Kerry.
Oborne’s belief that apologising to Pakistanis and Kashmiris encourages a victim culture overstates the esteem in which British politicians are held in the region. I very much doubt that anyone who feels a victim will feel more so because our PM acknowledges a level of British responsibility for their troubles. After all, a speech is just a speech, and it probably passed the real victims by.
So I see no harm – and much to gain – in apologising for the misdeeds of the past – and that includes events beyond our lifetimes. L P Hartley’s famous remark “the past is a different country: they did things differently there”, which Oborne quotes, though elegantly put, is wrong.
It’s not a different country for Shiites, for whom the death of the Imam Husayn at the Battle of Karbala fifteen hundred years ago still defines their faith and outlook on life. It’s not a different country for Christians who believe that two thousand years ago Jesus died for our sins. Nor is it so for conservative Sunnis who believe that we should live our lives by the example of the Prophet Mohammed, and by the culture and norms of Arabian society as was it in the Prophet’s time. Or for Irish patriots both side of the loyalist-republican divide who still tell their children about the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.
The past adds meaning to the present. Apologies for the sins of the past do not make the present better unless they cause us to reappraise our attitudes about the world around us. Perhaps by a few less Asians being called “Pakis” in the streets of Bradford, by a few more cricket matches between India and Pakistan, a few less imams calling on the faithful to make war on the kuffar, and a few less attention-seeking bigots in Florida burning someone else’s holy book.
And apology should not be the preserve of politicians. No nation and no society has a past from which we can’t learn. Whether or not we know who they are, we as individuals all have ancestors of whose behaviour we have the right to disapprove. If by expressing disapproval of wrong-doings of the past we are signalling that we will not condone such acts and omissions in the present, then is that apology not worth making?
Finally, I would suggest to Peter Oborne that taking a balanced and impartial view of your country’s past doesn’t stop you being a patriot.
I met a guy last night who was so outraged by what he saw the as the BBC’s biased reporting of recent events in Bahrain that he is planning to go to the United Nations in New York to protest about the Corporation’s behaviour.
Like me, he’s of the old school that believes that an international news organisation trusted around the world has the responsibility- if it is to maintain its reputation – to report current events as impartially as is practical. And that means, in the case of Bahrain, verifying stories rather than reporting heresay, and balancing coverage with the views both of the opposition and the government.
In an ideal world, he must surely be right. And it’s quite possible that the BBC didn’t distinguish itself in Bahrain. But let’s think for a moment about the whole issue of communications in times of conflict and crisis, and particularly about the battle for hearts and minds in what one day historians might refer to as the Arab Spring.
And if we’re looking at communications, we need to consider the positions of all the interested stakeholders: international media, local media, governments, opposition movements, and finally ourselves, the consumers of an incessant stream of news and opinion.
Since we started with the alleged failings of the Beeb, let’s look first at the international media.
Since Tunisia, the Middle East and North Africa have turned into a bit of a circuit. Armies of reporters and analysts alighted first on Tunisia, moved on to Egypt and descended on Bahrain. Some made side trips to Jordan and Yemen. Today, the news roadshow is camped in Libya, with expeditionary forces in Syria and still in Yemen. In London, Doha and Atlanta we have a host of commentators ready to say their tuppenceworth either at the studies or from their perches in other metropolitan centres.
The individual reporter is involved in a personal war. Looking to reach the scene of some demonstration or outbreak of violence before the newshounds of the other networks and newspapers. Critics would say: looking for blood. Some have a reputation to make. Some are pretty pedestrian (memo to self: one of these days write a list of the top ten clichés of TV journalism. For example, use of the word “they” in the first sentence of a report – as in: solemn voice to camera – “they came in their thousands….”). Others are what you would call “doyens” – John Simpson, Jeremy Bowen and so forth.
In a major crisis, no single reporter provides the whole story. One might report from Benghazi or Misrata. Another might be in Tripoli waiting for Gaddafi to gargle “Al Qaeda – it is Al Qaeda!”, explaining to the world how Osama’s boys have cunningly drugged the masses with mind-bending drugs in their coffee. It’s then up to the team at home to determine what stories to run, and which talking heads to wheel in for comment.
If you’re a lone reporter – competing with a bunch of other lone reporters, some with big egos and ambitions to match – what do you go for first? You discover that there’s major action to cover – possibly bodies, wounded and eye-witnesses to interview – do you go to the scene, gather what you can and stream your story back to the studio before anyone else can send their version? Or do you wait to hear the other side of the story – perhaps from a policeman who helped to clear the Pearl Roundabout, or one of Gaddafi’s people who has been lobbing shells into Misrata? Well, the chances are that the policeman won’t talk to you, and the Libyan soldier will be too busy lobbing more shells, unless he’s been vaporised by an NATO air strike.
So you go with the story at hand. And yes, you might get it wrong. You might misinterpret what a witness has told you, or take false logic leaps on the basis of what you are seeing. And if you do, your words hang round your neck for eternity. But remember that in the heat of the moment the participants themselves don’t always have a clear view of what’s going on. It’s often not until many hours later that you get to talk to an “official government spokesman” who will give you the government’s version of events.
And yes, you might stray beyond the bounds of impartiality. Not everyone has the ability of Kate Adie and John Simpson to let the pictures and unassailable facts speak for themselves. Reporters are human too, and if confronted by scenes of cruelty and horror, it’s hard for them not to let their personal feelings seep into their reporting. And there have been some reporters in recent months who have led their audiences to conclusions not supported by verifiable facts, and influenced by their obvious emotions in covering the story.
So is it fair to accuse the international media of impartiality? Possibly. But remember that they are reporting a story that unfolds. Potted opinions from all sides are not available in a neat package at a single point in time. I think that you can only take a view on impartiality if you look at coverage over days rather than hours. So it’s easy for me to look at a five-minute piece to camera and say “that’s outrageous”. But if I then watch a stream of reports over a couple of days that present only one side of the story, then I’m entitled to question the agenda or professionalism of the news service.
What of the local media?
Well, the main difference from the international media is that local papers are typically owned by local people. Local editors and reporters can’t simply strike their tents and head off to the next battlefield or square. They have to live with the consequences of what they publish. The suspension in Bahrain of Al Wasat newspaper, followed by the sacking of the editorial team for alleged fabrication of stories, is a telling reminder of that.
The owners of local newspapers often have specific political agendas. They will rarely let the editorial team get on with the job. So a reporter will be told what to report, and an editor will run the story – sometimes with gritted teeth. Nothing unusual in this. Big ticket newspapers in the West have always had interfering proprietors. William Randolph Hearst, Lord Beaverbrook and the odious Robert Maxwell particularly come to mind.
But the big papers have to be subtle – they have to hide the level of interference by their proprietors for fear of alienating their huge readerships. Smaller papers are much more often the playthings of proprietors who don’t really care if their readers know they are being led. In fact some are more than happy for their names to appear under a leader – something that you wouldn’t see Rupert Murdoch doing.
Local newspapers in the Middle East often have a fine line to tread – as the Al Wasat experience shows. Most governments claim not to censor their local independent media. Yet the editors themselves are aware of a red line, and many make strenuous efforts to stay some yards away from it. A recent piece in mideastposts.com describes a good example of their timidity in the UAE. Editors and columnists who stray beyond the line find themselves removed with little notice. And many governments have laws that they pull out of their back pockets if they feel that a little punitive action is called for.
Moving on to governments.
How do they communicate in times of crisis? Not always very well. Most Middle Eastern governments do not have the smooth communications machines that the likes of Barack Obama and David Campbell have at their disposal. And unlike Obama and Cameron, most leaders – especially the hereditary ones – did not arrive in their positions because of their ability to communicate with their people. Some are good communicators. Others less so.
In this region, most information ministries prefer to communicate with the masses through stilted and interminable press releases, rich in polysyllables and dripping with nuances and implications. National TV is hardly more impressive. I wrote a piece about this a few weeks ago. When a crisis erupts, government media, by silence or obfuscation, will often reflect the shock and paralysis that afflicts the entire government. Their instinct is to say nothing beyond the formulaic until someone tells them what to say. And often, they will be serving more than one master. If one master falls out with another in the stress of the emergency, you might see completely different messages from one day to the next. Confusing, especially if you, the interested observer, are trying to make sense of what is going on.
Eventually, as the whole quantum of the emergency becomes known, governments do tend to get their acts together. They will appoint a loyalist like Moussa Ibrahim in Libya, who is capable of eloquently declaring that black is white, or perhaps a lower-key spokesperson who manages to get the official message across with some credibility.
If they are serving eccentric masters like Gaddafi, their task is not easy, especially when the leader pops up like a jack-in-a-box and blows away the communications strategy with an intemperate rant. And they will complain that nobody is listening to their side of the story. Sometimes they will be right. When Gaddafi blamed the uprising on Al Qaeda, there was much derision in the West. Less so today as it becomes evident that the jihadis have seeded themselves into the rebel front lines. But Gaddafi’s case wasn’t helped by theories about magic mushrooms in the coffee of the entire population of Benghazi.
Let’s now turn to the opposition, the protesters or the rebels.
For most of them, a communications strategy is the last thing on their minds at the outset. To have a strategy, you need an organisation. Although there may have been organisations at the heart of some of the initial protests, those that existed at the start will have been swept along by the enthusiasm of the thousands on which they depended to establish critical mass. Some will have ended up sidelined, only to regain some measure of control as events moved on.
But popular protests feed on media exposure. So by and large, their way of communicating their message has been via the international media, via Facebook and Twitter, not through a series of convoluted press releases. So the emphasis is on doing what you have to in order to make the headlines, to populate YouTube, to convince your fellow citizens and the world of the justice of your cause.
Only when things start going their way does any form of concerted communications policy emerge. At the Pearl Roundabout, for example, which I visited a week before its clearance, I was struck by how organised the tented village had become. Among the many semi-permanent fixtures, there was a media tent.
Protesters and rebels have a twin challenge when communicating. First they need to get “the street” on their side. And then they need to sway international opinion. The importance of the latter is exemplified in Libya by the success of the rebels and expatriate lobbyists in persuading governments, and ultimately the UN, to impose a no-fly zone.
But sometimes they are not aware that they need to use different language to persuade different constituencies. To get the street onside, emotional language, especially the use of words that have resonance in Arabic, can do the trick.
However, if they are looking to convince Western politicians and public opinion, they perhaps need a different approach. For example, if they use the word “martyr”, a substantial part of an audience in the United States or Britain will immediately turn off. Many Westerners will equate the term with suicide bombers, and will dub the writer or speaker a fanatic. Likewise, using colourful terms like “thugs” to describe the other side, and “kidnap” instead of arrest might convince some, but definitely not others.
A better strategy is to use language that an international audience would expect to hear from their own “serious” media– impassioned perhaps, but logical, fact-based and without cultural references likely to alienate potential supporters and influencers.
Finally, what about you and me – the average consumers of news?
From childhood most of us have been targets of persuasion – and, some would say – of manipulation. Parents, politicians, peers, priests, imams, teachers, employers and advertisers. We have spent our lives directly or indirectly being told what to think and do by any number of people and organisations. From that daily dose of persuasion and influence we emerge as adults with opinions. Some come from our own experience. Others are cultural defaults that we never stop to challenge.
That’s not to say that we don’t change our minds about things over time – of course we do. For most of us, the influences that have shaped our opinions have been benevolent, or at least neutral. But in every society there is the potential for malevolence – temporary or sustained – to take hold. We only have to look at the well-oiled communications machine of Dr Josef Goebbels and his fellow Nazis to see how a nation can enter a state of temporary insanity through the encouragement of relentless and malevolent communications.
So it’s no bad thing for us to get into the habit of questioning, just like my acquaintance who has mounted his campaign against the BBC. To look at news stories and think about what motivates the authors – where the stories come from, and whether you accept them at face value.
For many of us, Arab or non-Arab, this is a given. But in the Middle East, the constant refrain is that educational systems do not encourage critical thinking.
And as we are bombarded with news and opinions from so many sources – far more than previous generations – finding our way through the fog demands more critical thinking skills than ever before.
We could, of course, just accept what we’re told, go with the flow, and hope for a quiet life.
I know what I prefer, but it sure is hard work sometimes.
There is gruesome, and then there is gruesome. I hardly ever post a blog piece in a state of anger, but I’m making an exception now.
I’ve just watched a YouTube video – sent to me by someone I know – that purports to be of an act of spectacular cruelty. I have no idea whether it was staged, but I suspect not, because it was such a cack-handed piece of video. Someone who was staging it would have had more professional pride, and would probably have shown even more details to ram home the message.
Assuming it was genuine, it would appear to be from somewhere in this region. The video identifies where, but I’m not going say, just as I’m not going to specify the act, because I don’t want to be responsible for driving traffic to it.
My anger is about two things. First that a baying mob should believe that their God would approve of what was being done in His name. Second, that YouTube and its owner Google (whose motto, remember, is “do no evil”), should think that it’s OK to carry stuff like this that can be accessed by a ten-year-old.
Yes, we know that there’s some pretty horrible stuff circulating around the internet. But when “extreme content” makes it on to YouTube, then the chance that it is seen by the young and impressionable is drastically increased.
I’m not squeamish. I believe in free speech and I’m generally against censorship of any kind. But there are limits. There is right and wrong. By my moral code, it’s wrong that ten-year-olds should be exposed to pornography and grow up with a skewed idea about sex before they’ve ever had a sexual encounter. It’s wrong that that kids of the same age should be able to find videos of unspeakable violence in the same place as they watch their Justin Bieber videos.
When I was growing up in the UK, we had a self-appointed TV watchdog called Mary Whitehouse, who generated a lot of publicity through her campaigns against obscenity on TV and in the movies. I and most of my friends thought her a self-righteous old cow for trying to stop us from seeing the odd naughty bit in some avant garde TV drama. She would act in the grand tradition of the self-appointed censor by saying “I haven’t personally seen it, but from what I’ve been told….”
If she’d lived into the 2010s, she would have been in a permanent state of gibbering outrage.
Unlike Mary Whitehouse, I’ve seen stuff. The chances are that you have as well.
Yes, I know there are parental control settings in most applications, including Google. But there are also millions of parents who exercise minimal control over what their kids watch on TV and on the internet. That should be on their consciences.
I have no idea if Larry Page and Sergei Brin, founders and major shareholders of Google, have young kids. But I wonder how they sleep at night in the knowledge that the source of their fortune is responsible for giving a generation of youngsters access to the pornography of extreme violence.
This is not a generational issue. People have the right to make choices. But there’s a difference between positive choice and neglect. My kids are just about grown up. I’m sure they saw some stuff we wouldn’t have liked them to see, hard as we tried to protect them – hopefully they’re not too much the worse for it. But I wonder if most of the mums and dads whose kids are growing up today really have much idea about what’s a few clicks away on their offspring’s laptops.
So there we are. I’m angry at the violence, I’m angry about people who use extreme violence to distort, lie and manipulate, and I’m angry about the billionaires who allow their media to be the peep show for the violence.
Extremely angry.
Following on from my post the other day on Blogging, here are one or two other thoughts, the first of which arose from a reader’s comment.
Choosing a name for your blog
I chose 59steps because it’s a blank canvas. I had a good idea where I was going with the blog, but I didn’t want to tie myself down to a specific subject with the site name. Also there are about half a million bloggers on WordPress, so it wasn’t easy to find a suitable name that was available.
Some people, especially if they’re running their blog as a commercial proposition, will consider it critically important to choose a name that relates to the focus. If you’re writing about football and only football, for example, it makes sense to go for a name that contains the word football. But if you want to write about football, life, the universe and everything else (to paraphrase the late lamented Charles Addams), then you risk losing people who come to your site for the first time hoping for your insight on Christiano Ronaldo, and the first post they stumble upon is your thoughts about the meaning of the cosmos – though you might pick up a few New York Cosmos fans if you use that word as a tag….
So it seems like common sense to avoid any name that is too focused – and potentially excludes traffic from some of the things you’re writing about.
Editing your posts
I write quite quickly, and when I’ve finished a piece, I want it on the site, now! I guess that instant gratification is one of the allures of blogging. But sometimes it helps to write the piece, wait a few hours, and then come back to it. Maybe even sleep on it.
No matter how many times you run through the piece immediately after writing it, there’s always a chance you’ll miss a typo or a piece of awkward language. It happens all the time to me. I find myself updating the piece after posting. I’ll come back to it a few hours later and think s**t – I missed that! But by that time a number of your regular readers will have read the post, and can have a laugh at your bad spelling or maladroit prose. At least you can correct the error, and try and kid yourself that it was never there in the first place, which you can’t do when your howler appears in the next day’s newspaper.
The other advantage of stepping back is that you might come up with new insights. I’ve often completely restructured a piece after I’ve let it lie for a while.
This is really about writing in general rather than blogging. But if you’re writing in public for the first time through a blog, waiting for a bit before posting can pay dividends.
Contacting people you link to
I think it’s good practice, and common courtesy, to contact bloggers and others when you link to their websites. I don’t always do it, especially if I’m linking to a major newspaper article – the newspaper is likely to be sublimely disinterested unless they think you’re plagiarising their content and thereby denying them sales. But sometimes I contact the author of the piece, and strike up a relationship with them. If you let a fellow blogger know that you’ve linked to their site, they are more likely to reciprocate if they find your stuff interesting. But I never ask outright for any link. Giving is better than receiving!
Further suggestions welcome.
59steps 