Mideast Meets West
- Pipeline
- Saudi Aramco News
- Other Media
Author: Michael McCord
Released 18 September 2005
Dr. Abdallah E. Dabbagh and Dr. Thuraya al Arrayad
Photograph by Jackie Ricciardi
PORTSMOUTH, NEW HAMPSHIRE, August 21, 2005 - One of the more interesting facets of the wave we call economic globalization is how local issues aren’t, well, quite so local.
A case in point: Saudi businessman Dr. Abdallah Dabbagh said the same issue vexing many New Hampshire business leaders has a counterpoint in Saudi Arabia.
"Educated workers," Dabbagh told me. The twist to the issue isn’t the number of educated Saudis, but the fact many of their educated young are unemployed or ill-equipped to work and compete in the global marketplace.
Dabbagh, who studied for his doctorate at the University of North Carolina, is president and CEO of Ma’aden, the largest Saudi mining company. He is a major player in the Saudi economic reform movement. To be more precise, he is part of an unprecedented social, economic and political debate to define the future of the kingdom.
"We are at a turning point in Saudi history," he said. "The issue is how to be part of the rest of the world. Some in my country say don’t open up and not be part of the future. There are those who believe we must reform and the key is our educational system. We need to give our young people jobs."
I met Dabbagh and his wife Thuraya al Arrayed, a consultant for Saudi Aramco (the largest oil conglomerate in the world) and a recognized poet, at a private dinner at The Metro restaurant in downtown Portsmouth recently hosted for the couple by the International Trade Resource Center. The guest list included academics, state trade experts, Portsmouth Poet Laureate Mimi White, and businessmen like Thomas Blais, president of Rokon International, the Gonic-based company that makes off-road motorcycles.
Informal diplomacy
The intent of the dinner was to establish informal ties, a first step if you like, toward increasing trade with Saudi Arabia.
The ultimate impact of this low-level public diplomacy was to put human, comfortably Westernized faces (al Arrayed also has a doctorate from the University of North Carolina) on a country that remains at best a mystery to most Americans who often see the oil-producing giant in Hollywood terms - a combination of "Lawrence of Arabia" exotic fiction and post-9/11 Osama bin Laden reality.
It was a reality that both Dabbagh and al Arrayed, who were there as private citizens and not emissaries of the Saudi government, addressed eloquently and without hesitation.
It’s an uncomfortable truth that 15 of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, and all too frequently in the popular American press since 9/11, Saudi Arabia is portrayed as a culturally conservative straight jacket bursting at the seems with bin Laden clones.
The truth, like Saudi Arabia itself, is far more complicated. Dabbagh said the bin Laden terrorist jihad had put the majority of Saudis - who aren’t radical fundamentalists and simply "want a job" and to live their lives in peace - and Americans on the same enemy page.
One of the casualties of the current "war on terrorism" climate is that while governments may work together closely on intelligence and security issues, Dabbagh told the dinner guests it has become more difficult for individuals to make contact. For example, making it harder for Saudi students to get education visas may offer the veneer of enhanced protection, but it only increases the gulf of cultural apprehension and mistrust on both sides.
‘Commerce will happen’
"Individuals can break down barriers," said Anka Jacobs of the International Trade Resource Center. "Small events like these to building business relationships and (creating) a greater cultural understanding."
If given a chance, Jacobs told me, "when you find common ground, commerce will happen."
Not a lot of commerce has happened between New Hampshire businesses and Saudi Arabia, or for much of the Middle East for that matter, which isn’t a surprise given the normal volatile geopolitical realities of the region (see Israel and the Palestinians), the unpopular Iraq War, especially from the Arab perspective, and major cultural gulfs.
In 2004, Granite State businesses exported about $6.5 million of goods and services to Saudi Arabia, but those figures have remained flat the past couple of years.
Blais, of Rokon International, would like to increase those totals. He already does major business in Jordan - Rokons are very popular with the Jordanian military - but would like to send more of his unique motorcycles to a country like Saudi Arabia.
He told me connections are everything and he would like to establish them between his agents in Jordan and potential partners in Saudi Arabia. When Dabbagh suggested his country might have use for 20,000 or so Rokon bikes, Blais was more than a little interested.
The timing for Blais and Rokon may be right. Dabbagh believes the tide of Saudi economic reform, along with the current boom in Saudi fortunes (courtesy of higher oil prices) and the billions of dollars that will finance needed infrastructure improvements in the country, will allow more opportunities for New Hampshire businesses to take part.
The price of oil wealth
If it has become politically and socially expedient here to whine about our dependence on Middle East oil, the flip side is that for many years Saudi Arabia has been addicted to oil money. The result became a mostly inefficient and corruption-tainted economy that created great wealth for a minority, but declining job opportunities for the majority of the country’s highly educated young.
Dabbagh acknowledges the unemployment issue is a serious one. It’s a demographic time bomb waiting to explode.
For all the talk about cultural wars in America, we are fraternity-house amateurs compared to Saudi Arabia; al Arrayed said her land is "a young country with a long history." The country was created about 75 years ago when one of the major tribal leaders, Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, united the major tribes.
Dabbagh told me his Hashemite tribe was marginalized and his grandfather chose exile before returning to the kingdom to start one of the first schools in the country that included nonreligious subjects such as mathematics.
‘Desert psyche’
To understand Saudi Arabia, al Arrayed said, is to understand the "desert psyche" of the people in a country mostly dry and barren. The modern cities are literally oases in a culture defined by Islam and tribal geography. Dobbagh said his country is profoundly conservative and economic reform will proceed along that paradigm.
And while American businessmen are often frustrated by regulations, that is likely a minor inconvenience compared to dealing with conservative religious clerics and debating the fine print of the Qur’an and what the Prophet Muhammad may or may not have considered proper economics.
But that is precisely the landscape - the clash between the certainty of tradition and the uncertainty of reform - that reformers like Dabbagh face.
"I believe there is no conflict between reform and the Qur’an," he told me. It was a statement that no American business leader of similar rank would ever have to say regarding the Bible.
Founded in 1997, Ma’aden is a billion-dollar company, a joint venture with the government that has become a poster child for economic reform. The country’s major mineral resources have remained largely untouched for centuries. In addition to building up the company and diversifying its mineral portfolio, Dabbagh has spun off some of its business units into private companies.
And then there is phosphate. Ma’aden is planning to build what will be one of the largest aluminum industry projects in history, one that could make Saudi Arabia the world’s largest exporter of phosphates to hungry countries like China and India.
Now you know the world is changing rapidly when phosphates, and not oil, could be one the keys to the economic future of Saudi Arabia. It’s a story that bears watching - and watching closely - for what happens in Riyadh could likely have major implications for the rest of the world.