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On Security
December 27, 2004
Four years ago, "security" would not have come up on the list of potential topics for my Dhahran webpages. When I first moved to Dhahran in 1997, security wasn't an issue that concerned me. It wasn't something that I thought about, and I think that it's safe to say that it was something most people in the Dhahran area didn't worry too much about either. That did not mean, however, that we didn't have to worry about security at all. After all, only about a year earlier (in 1996), the Khobar Towers were bombed in the neighboring city of Al Khobar, and American airmen were killed. And at the beginning of the decade, the Gulf War had ignited a state of caution, which led to such things as the handing out of gas masks and the rumors of stray Iraqi missiles crashing nearby.
But I wasn't there when these events occurred. The hype and caution surrounding those times had long peaked and gone, and the only reminder of these times were the cement road blocks (each one the size of an enormous rectangular fish tank) around the schools and other public buildings (to stop charging vehicles loaded with explosives), as well as the barbed wire fences connecting each of the guarded gates.
Over the years, I gained the impression that quite a few people felt safe in the community. Some kids at the middle school (Dhahran School) knocked over almost all the cement road blocks that lined the main school bus entry, through which nearly all the kids at the school entered. Some households did not even lock their doors. Guards usually just waved at the gates after seeing the company stickers on the car windshield. Even outside the compound, I never felt that I had anything to fear, aside from the maniacal drivers. Foreigners and local Saudis coexisted.
But in 2001, things changed. Suddenly, some of the locals were denying that Saudi nationals were among those involved in 9/11, and claims that Israel and/or the U.S. deliberately caused 9/11 in some sort of conspiracy was a somewhat popular theory in the region. Of course, there were also those who tried to emphasize continuing friendship and coexistence with foreigners, but with those who thought otherwise, there grew some tension.
Because I spent most of the year in California during these years, most of my experiences of these times came from my winter, summer, and spring breaks in Dhahran, as well as my air travel experiences to and from Dhahran.
Air travel to and from Dhahran became increasingly slower and full of hassles as everything from security measures from the U.S. to Europe to the Middle East increased, and as customs searching became more thorough as well. The cost of travel visas increased as Saudi Arabia responded to the U.S.'s increase of travel hurdles upon Saudi Arabia. In multiple trips across the years, I was pulled aside for extra baggage checks after the baggage claim carousels at San Francisco International because my passport was issued at the U.S. Consulate in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, or because Arabic was written on some of my passport pages. Before departuring from SFO, I was also "randomly" pulled aside with my sister for a shoe check, conveniently right after our passports were checked. In Amsterdam, we could not enter or wait ahead of time at the gates from which America-bound flights were situated, so my sister and I, both tired from a six or eleven hour flight (depending on which direction we were headed), had to find elsewhere to wait.
Yet, I felt that security was really becoming and issue in 2003 because security in the region really began destabilizing after the U.S. government declared the ultimatum on Iraq. After that, attacks on foreigners were happening all over the kingdom, from the suicide bombers shooting their way into three housing compounds in Riyadh in May 2003, to the attack at the petrochemical site in Yanbu in April 2004, to the attack on the compounds 15 minutes away in Al Khobar in May 2004 (where all foreigners were being targeted, not just Americans and Britons). Between these major events was an increasing amount of attacks from Jeddah to Riyadh to Khobar - all across the kingdom.
In fact, attacks and hostage-taking occurred nearly every week in the one month that I was back in Dhahran in the summer of 2004. A large percentage of families in the Dhahran compound and neighboring compounds left after what happened in May 2004. The schools in the compound ended early and cancelled their annual August intersessions, similarly to the early shutdown of the Dhahran Academy the year before (and the disruption of the graduation that year). Fences were reinforced multiple times as more and more events occurred, to the point where the fences are being replaced with tall, thick walls. New ten foot high walls are being built around the schools around the already existing cement road blocks. At the gates, there seem to be three or four times the original number of guards, and every car's trunk is checked at the gate, with the help of sniffing dogs stationed near the gates. Meanwhile, heavy artillery-like weapons mounted on pickup trucks with double-sided metallic shields guard the gates and checkpoints scattered across many of the main roads (especially after the Riyadh incident in May 2003).
Many foreigners began to severely reduce the number of trips outside the compounds, especially as hostage-taking seemed to become more popular. Consequently, it felt like a siege, or perhaps a house arrest. Many people decided to keep a low profile. Life wasn't quite as normal anymore in Dhahran.
The number of events in 2004 alone probably dwarfs the number of incidents before 2003. The number of incidents in 2003 alone probably dwarfs that of all of the 1990's. Because of the sheer amount of activity in 2003 and 2004, it's arguable that the U.S.'s war in Iraq has ignited this destabilizing of the region. Whether or not you agree with that, it has become increasingly clear that the U.S. campaign in Iraq has only made life as a foreigner in Saudi Arabia much more difficult and dangerous.
-Gordon Mei
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