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INSIGHT

Eye on the Middle East: Saudi Arabia

Aired November 24, 2005 - 23:00:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

JONATHAN MANN, CNN HOST: The young and the restless. Saudi Arabia's young men want more. Its young women want more; equality, opportunity and fun. What can the kingdom's economy and culture offer them?
Hello and welcome.

Saudi Arabia is a kingdom ruled by conservative, elderly men according to the tenets of an ancient faith. But the majority of its nearly 25 million people are under 25 years of age. There are more young people with more education than the country has ever known. The challenge they represent cuts across culture, religion and economics.

As we continue our special week of Eye on the Middle East coverage, the Saudi search for something new.

CNN's Nic Robertson has a series of reports from the kingdom.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SR. INTL. CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): To see what drives Saudi's young men into a frenzy, check out the nighttime streets of Jeddah. Excitement is a craze and young men here are crazy about their cars.

"I don't speed," he says. "Honestly, I don't go fast."

But high speed car racing, popularized on emailed video clips like this one, is an issue. Hundreds of young men are dying in automobile wrecks yearly. Race fanatics see few other options for fun.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We don't have anything to do it in the job and in the work.

ROBERTSON: At Saudi Arabia's first ever entertainment mall for young men, its creator, retired rally driver Abdullah Bakashab (ph), is trying to give disaffected youths more to do.

ABDULLAH BAKASHAB (ph), MALL OWNER: The government are understanding their needs now and we are trying to -- they are trying to do -- like supporting events, like this, or places like this.

ROBERTSON (on camera): It's concepts like this that are catapulting entertainment to places it's never been to before. And for thrill-seekers, there are plenty of them here, likely to be a big hit.

(voice-over): To gauge how big a hit, I went to meet a Saudi friend.

(on camera): Is anything changing?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah, it is, a lot. A lot.

ROBERTSON: A lot changing?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah, a lot.

ROBERTSON (voice-over): I first met Mohammad Rawi (ph) a year-and-a- half ago at a factory here. At the vanguard of a government drive to hire Saudis, he'd begged for the job after years of being unemployed.

Away from his new job, he was frustrated by social restrictions; religious police forbade contact with girls.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I am very happy now. It's not perfect, but it is more and more and more better.

ROBERTSON: But, like many, he lacks the money to enjoy the new entertainment complex. Girls are still his priority.

To show me what's changed in his life, he takes me to a mall where only families are allowed.

(on camera): To come here normally you would have to come with your sister. Why is that?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have to bring a woman with me.

ROBERTSON: Why?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's the rule.

ROBERTSON (voice-over): Tough rules, but at the same time religious police are relaxing their guard a little, unheard of a few years ago.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Okay, you want me to bring girls with me, I'll bring my sister, but when I bring my sister, okay, you sit there, I will meet another girl.

ROBERTSON (on camera): So your sister will sit here, you'll meet a girl over here. That's how it works?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah, that's what happens.

ROBERTSON (voice-over): But Mohammad is not always so lucky. At another mall recently religious police made him cut his hair.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think in my mind, what can I do.

ROBERTSON (on camera): But you haven't been in front of a judge, there has been no jury, there has been no law against long hair.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, there is not -- no, no, no. They don't need judge for this.

ROBERTSON: And there is no law against long hair?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No. He's the judge.

ROBERTSON: The religious policeman?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah, he's the judge. He's the judge.

ROBERTSON: Pressure for change is huge. Almost 3/4 of the population are Mohammad's age, 25, or younger, and while nobody has exact figures for the number of unemployed, it is believed to be at least 1/4 of the total workforce.

(voice-over): In a more affluent part of Jeddah, where young students drive new BMWs, attitudes towards life are more relaxed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We go car racing, we play any kind of sports. We go to the beach.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Every weekend we go swim and meet friends.

ROBERTSON: But even here, though, there is worry about getting a job.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Of course, it's not easy to get a job here. You must be good at college and your grades should be good.

ROBERTSON: At a nearby table, parents bemoan kids never had it so good, but worry about a growing drug culture, and who in the changing society their children are meeting.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Undercover, you know. Undercover. They have parties, special parties, private parties.

ROBERTSON (on camera): Your son too?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, he didn't join those kinds of parties, but I have to ask who is reviewing the party.

ROBERTSON (voice-over): A year-and-a-half after Mohammad and I first met, he still enjoys pool. Indeed, says it's easier to find places to play. But with his friends, they all feel worlds apart from their parents' more conservative generation.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have to wait until the old generation will be in the past. After this, we will think about (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

ROBERTSON: The feeling I get is change is already happening. Mohammad sees it in more than just the subtle relaxations around him.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: About the people, they understand now. Before they (UNINTELLIGIBLE) but now you can say 70 percent, they don't support it.

ROBERTSON: Change, it seems, is bringing new dangers in places old.

Nic Robertson, CNN, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MANN: It's ironic that young Saudi men feel so liberated by their cars. Some Saudi women see cars as a symbol of liberation of another kind. In many different respects, they just want a place in the driver's seat.

Once again, here's Nic Robertson.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTSON (voice-over): Life for girls in Saudi Arabia doesn't get more daring than this. At the wheel of a virtual car, Annan (ph) is not sure if she'll drive when she grows up. Not because she's crashing but because women are banned from doing the real thing.

MAHA FITAIHI, WOMEN'S RIGHTS ACTIVIST: This is the house for ladies who can -- widows and divorced.

ROBERTSON: In her chauffer-driven car, as she drives me around her hometown, Jeddah, women's rights activist Maha Fitaihi sees change.

(on camera): How long do you think before you could be driving around these streets?

FITAIHI: I think maybe a few months.

ROBERTSON: That's short.

FITAIHI: It will have a backlash, I'm sure, from some people who don't believe in the woman's role in life.

ROBERTSON: The more religious extremes.

FITAIHI: Yeah. And expected, but we're ready for that, yeah.

ROBERTSON (voice-over: Female drivers are a hot issue. Video clips like this, purporting to be women flaunting the law, driving in Saudi Arabia, are popular in the growing youth counterculture of video messaging.

Fitaihi, though, wants more than just being allowed to drive. She wants religious extremist, responsible for repressing women's rights, to radically reform their attitudes. She wants respect.

FITAIHI: I want to see that when you talk to me, you listen to me and you talk me in the eyes. You look me in the eyes and you respect me as a woman and you take what I say as a woman.

That was the first time we came up on the TV. We were eight ladies.

ROBERTSON: Her path, from mother of five to reformer, began in earnest with TV appearances following September 11.

FITAIHI: Just talking the everyday life as a mother and as a wife living here, that had a life and wanted to have a better life.

ROBERTSON: She felt Saudis were responsible for the attacks in the United States and her country needed to change. She discovered she wasn't alone.

FITAIHI: I was shocked by some of the messages and telephone calls.

ROBERTSON: Many women supported her view that narrow religious education is the root of the Saudi problem. Stemming from the empowerment of conservative religious leaders following a botched revolt against the royal family.

FITAIHI: That incident of 1979 had an impact on our TV, our schools, our education, our daily life. You know, everywhere, we were not allowed to speak out.

ROBERTSON: Fitaihi is devoted to Islam. She prays five times a day. To do less would allow religious extremists to derail her agenda.

FITAIHI: My mission, that I would like to differentiate and to show the differences between what is from Islam and what is from social practices and customs.

I was living here in the...

ROBERTSON: Nowhere is her calculated bucking at the social norm more obvious then when she shows me where she grew up. For a woman to be in public with an unrelated man is banned by religious police. For it to be filmed for Western television is a first for me. It is a sign of change.

In the market's female migrant workers she sees optimism and reality in equal measure.

FITAIHI: Two years ago it was only maybe three or four women. You see now how many? Saudi women themselves, they don't want to get into this now because they don't know that it's -- maybe that she is going to be harmed, maybe she is going to be hurt, maybe she is going to be hearing something -- but the more we have like this, I'm sure in two year's time you'll find some Saudis sitting here.

ROBERTSON: Her optimism is based on trust in the new Saudi monarch, King Abdullah, in whose hands women's fortunes here lie.

(on camera): Just looking along this rack of magazines and newspapers gives an indication of the subtle and slow change on women's issues. This magazine, for example, features a picture of Saudi Arabia's king and a woman on its cover. It would have been unheard of several years ago. And, like many publications these days, features more articles relevant for women.

(voice-over): And elsewhere, women are getting minor victories. Girls can now study engineering. Women can join chambers of commerce, both formerly off-limits. But fundamental changes, like equality in law, are nowhere in sight.

Fitaihi has been fighting for her own college-aged girls. She knows the final push may come from them.

FITAIHI: The new generation is rejecting that power without logic, and this is the cause of the Internet and the TV -- we have satellite TVs - - and their exposure.

ROBERTSON: More than 60 percent of the country is under 16. Seventeen-year-old Sally knows what she wants and is breaking social norms to tell us.

"It would be better if women could drive," she says. "It would be easier on the family."

By the time Annan (ph) is Sally's age, she may well be driving, and if she keeps practicing, she'll likely do just fine.

Nic Robertson, CNN, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MANN: We take a break. When we come back, measuring prosperity and peril. Saudi Arabia cashes in on the oil boom, but the kingdom's war on terror, who is winning?

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MANN: Saudi Arabia's stability and prosperity depend on two numbers. One is the price of oil. The other is the quantity that Saudi Arabia has to sell. Right now, both numbers look big.

Welcome back.

Right now Saudi Arabia is making more money from its oil than ever before and you can see some of that money, literally, in the streets and stores of the kingdom. Good news for the country that's trying to create jobs for all its people and invest in a future after oil. Some outsiders say the oil boom will be cut short, though, because Saudi supplies are smaller than the kingdom is willing to admit. Saudi experts say there is no reason to worry, and the people of Saudi Arabia don't seem all that troubled.

Once again, here's CNN's Nic Robertson.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTSON (voice-over): At the shop end of Saudi Arabia's oil boom, shoppers swarm over the latest fashions. Inflated oil prices on the world market are boosting the economy, filling the country's brand new malls.

ANAS SALEH SEIRAFI, ARCHITECT: This is the existing shopping mall.

ROBERTSON (on camera): This one here? Uh-huh.

SEIRAFI: And just across the street you have, this is the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) department.

ROBERTSON (voice-over): Business is so good, architect Anas Seirafi, who built this mall, is planning another. With increasing global demand for Saudi oil, expectations are for a rosy future.

SEIRAFI: From the number of people visiting the mall, you can also see that it's great, it's great business.

ROBERTSON (on camera): The cash flow is going so well, the government has given all of its employees a 15 percent pay raise. And according to the Saudi American bank, the economy is doing its best in a last 20 years. Indeed, they say revenues from oil exports is expected to top $163 billion this year, that's up on $106 billion last year.

(voice-over): But even for a country with 1/4 of the world's proven oil reserves, 260 billion barrels, such an economic boom was not always the case.

ADRIAN BINKS, ARGUS MEDIA GROUP: Back in 1998, Saudi Arabia was facing almost bankruptcy, with oil prices at around $10 a barrel, the Saudi economy was shuddering to a halt.

ROBERTSON: That scare threw into sharp focus a looming unemployment crisis resulting from a failure to invest earlier oil profits in programs that would benefit the surging young population.

This time, Saudis say they'll spend their money more wisely.

ALI NAIMI, SAUDI OIL MINISTER: The objective of the nation is to diversify and broaden and deepen the economy of Saudi Arabia.

ROBERTSON: The Saudi calculation is they need to be ready when the wells run dry and are preparing for that day, investing not just in oil but in industries outside the petrochemical sector.

NAIMI: We are looking at exploiting other natural resources in Saudi Arabia, such as gold, such as phosphates, such as bauxite.

ROBERTSON: The government is also energizing an initiative to leverage Saudi petrol dollars to attract new business from outside the country.

AMJAD SHAKER, SAUDI INVESTMENT AUTHORITY: The government has realized that it needs to diversify a long time ago. Therefore, the private sector is encouraged to invest in sectors other than oil.

ROBERTSON: But nobody here expects oil to run out any time soon.

At the Saudi oil giant ARAMCO's high tech hub, engineers monitor oil flow from well head to tanker loading. The challenge here is predicting and keeping pace with rising global demand.

ABDULLAH S. JUM'AH, ARAMCO PRESIDENT: We have never promised a barrel on a date certain that was not delivered.

ROBERTSON: ARAMCO's reliability helps keep jitters out of the international oil markets, but outside Saudi Arabia, the question looms, how long will the oil last.

BINKS: No one probably knows what a full geological survey of Saudi Arabia will produce there. So you have to fall back and rely on the Saudi estimates.

ROBERTSON: In a new effort at openness, Saudis recently hosted a conference promoting confidence in their calculations. Even allowing for significant increases in output to upwards of 20 million barrels a day, they confidently forecast massive reserves in excess of the 260 billion barrels.

NAIMI: Because of our sophisticated reservoir engineering efforts, we will add an additional 200 billion barrels to our current reserves. We have no doubt that this is what is going to happen.

ROBERTSON: But international concerns focus not just on reserves but on how much output can be raised and how long it can be sustained. A recent offer to raise production by 1.5 million barrels a day poses a new problem, a shortfall of refineries for the type of oil Saudi is now producing.

BINKS: Increasingly, their supply is of a high sulfur form of oil and the question is has the world got the refinery capacity in place to refine that extra oil.

ROBERTSON: In the malls, the future may well be rosy, but maintaining the buoyant mood is likely to tax Saudi oilmen and economists alike.

Nic Robertson, CNN, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MANN: Even if oil remains abundant, it can't guarantee Saudi stability because extremists can always undermine it. Saudi Arabia is infamously the home of most of the 9/11 hijackers, of Osama bin Laden and many members of al Qaeda. The kingdom has also seen its own citizens targeted. And CNN's Nic Robertson one more time reports that it has been cracking down as never before.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROBERTSON (voice-over): Outside al Qaeda's preferred targets, like this diplomatic compound in Riyadh, security is still tight. It's been almost a year since the terror group launched an attack on such a high profile target in Saudi Arabia. But no one here is taking any chances.

GEN. MANSOUR AL TURKI, INTERIOR MINISTRY SPOKESMAN: It's the business, it's important, we think. They can strike any time.

ROBERTSON: General Turki has responded to some of the most horrific attacks against Westerners, including the capture of an al Qaeda cell that beheaded an American engineer last year.

Now he's convinced the tables are turned on the terror group.

TURKI: Since a year ago, it has always been the police running after them. I mean, they are the ones who have been on the run, you know, and they are the ones who try actually to hide out.

ROBERTSON (on camera): Saudi police say they have captured or killed 24 of their most wanted 26 terror suspects and have now released two more lists of top priority suspects, but readily admit they don't know where all the jihadists are, bringing on a whole new set of tactics in their fight on terrorism.

(voice-over): One of those tactics, a publicity campaign, explains to Saudis how jihadists have twisted Islam for their own aims. Its message is intended to cut support for al Qaeda.

Teaching in mosques and in schools has been changed to promote religious tolerance, undermining al Qaeda's narrow religious focus. Indications are the government is getting its message cross.

"Things are much better," he says, "thanks to God."

ROBERTSON (on camera): Just at the crossroads back here I remember a year-and-a-half a go there was a gunfight of the crossroads, back here, by the hospital.

ABDEL AZIA AL GASSEM: Oh, yes.

ROBERTSON (voice-over): To check for myself, I ask al Qaeda expert and reform activist lawyer Abdel Azia Al Gassem what changes he is seeing.

AL GASSEM: I think al Qaeda wasn't defeated, but there is a lot of successful attacks against.

ROBERTSON: He once spent time in jail for his past jihadi views. He understands better than most Saudis how and why youngsters are drawn to al Qaeda.

AL GASSEM (through translator): There is a big difference between this year and three years ago because of two reasons. The first is the fall of terrorism and its use of weapons. The second is the rise in hope which has come from the talk of reform and programs for social reform.

ROBERTSON: Another factor, he says, attacks like the December 2003 bombing of the Madhya (ph) residential compound in Riyadh, that have killed many Muslims.

AL GASSEM (through translator): This created an environment where people became more willing to accept the government point of view, which they were presenting in an intense campaign against these armed groups.

ROBERTSON: But there is a secret side to this war unseen by most Saudis. Police have built a system of high tech cameras that probe for al Qaeda activity and a computer-controlled dispatch system capable of speeding police to the scene of any flare up of violence.

Funding for elite counterterrorism units has also been ramped up. The government is concerned Saudi al Qaeda fighters in Iraq might return intent on bringing the battle home with them.

TURKI: We are more prepared to face it when it -- if they come back in a way to continue carrying their terrorist acts. So we are more ready, actually, to confront them and to stop them.

ROBERTSON: The government claims the number of those fighters is low, making it that much more difficult to identify good guys from bad.

Nick Robertson, CNN, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MANN: And that's INSIGHT for today. I'm Jonathan Mann. The news continues.

END

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