Working Shoulder-to-Shoulder for Better Saudi-US Relations

An open letter from a Saudi businessman, Amr Khashoggi, to Americans

Dear Americans:

I am a Saudi who graduated from American universities. I liked it so much that two of my children (a girl and a boy) also graduated from American universities. (My youngest daughter is a student at a British University by her own choice.) I am a businessman and I have worked over the past three decades with American companies, and we were very successful to healthy mutual benefit. I am still working with American companies but it is getting harder to do business with America.

I have relatives who are Americans. I have many friends in America from coast to coast. I also have been working very hard at fostering the relationship between America and Saudi Arabia for the past 28 years, even though it has been through an individual and limited effort.

Whenever I talk with my American friends they are always expressing kind words and heart-felt sentiments. These are encouraging and do give me greater impetus to stay the course of building bridges of understanding between our two nations. I believe that this effort must be energetic, continuous and for the long haul, to have any meaningful and lasting impact. It only takes a few minutes of a mindless act of violence to destroy not only the lives and livelihood of victims but also the strong friendship between nations such as ours that it took decades of hard work to build. Terrorism knows no borders and terrorists in my opinion carry out their heinous crimes against humans and humanity with the intention of driving a wedge between us.  It will take a major effort for both of us to close and overcome that wedge.  In order to do that we need to work shoulder to shoulder in the rebuilding effort and in countering this global menace of terrorism. 

We Arabs are learning to �come clean� and admit our weaknesses.  We are working diligently for homegrown solutions that can be implemented at a pace that can be accepted by our quite conservative society. This effort is public and is translated in the many reforms that you can easily find in our local newspapers published online in English (and sometimes news of such efforts get reported in your newspapers, although it is preferred by some media circles to publish only the negative news). 

These reforms have enabled Saudi women to be elected to the chambers of commerce and industry and engineering societies, have increased their work opportunities, and generally are taking control of their rights and lives. These rights have always been accorded to them under Islam.

The Saudi government, through its continued effort to reform, has also allowed municipal elections.  It has opened up more trade and investment opportunities in the lucrative Saudi market, especially after we joined the World Trade Organization, although it took us many years to negotiate that. Our financial markets are maturing quickly as more and more companies are going public and the booming stock market is being opened to international investors. We have several mega projects that American and other international companies can partake in, bringing not only hard currency to their countries and improving the balance of trade, but also providing very much needed jobs to their nationals.

However, Americans also have some challenges to "come clean."  There are many blunders committed by the American administration and supported by major mainstream media, many in academia, and an ill-informed public. You only need to look at some of the thorniest issues such as the ongoing violence in Iraq and to a large extent Afghanistan, the one-sided unconditional support of Israel in the occupation of Palestinian lands and the atrocities committed against the Palestinian people.  The list is long if you want to add environmental issues, human rights issues (Guantanamo, for example, and the latest CIA�s "Prisoners Abroad Program," illegal wire-tapping and monitoring for radiation of mosques and Islamic communities in the USA, flaunting of World Trade rules, etc .., etc ..)

I am being honest in my criticism of American policies because I care about the relationship. I want it to be built on trust, honesty and transparency. It is, in my mind, the only way to move forward. We have more than 100,000 Saudi students (the cr�me de la cr�me) with hard-earned scholarships to go to America. They have already been accepted at US universities. But they cannot get student visas to take advantage of the American education system.  The consulate in Jeddah has been closed for several months now, and the consulate in Dhahran has been closed since 1996. The American Embassy in Riyadh has so much pressure on them and very few resources that they have been able to process only 6,000 visas. Saudi graduates of US schools and universities are your best ambassadors -- many Saudis who serve in high positions are graduates of this system.. They are also your future business partners.

This is not to mention other Saudis wanting to go to America for business, medical care or tourism, who struggle to get visas to the USA. I leave it up to you to calculate the financial loss to the American economy, but believe me it is in the billions of dollars.

As they say, it takes two to tango, and our US-Saudi relationship must not be based solely on economic interests, but on mutual benefit for both of our nations. It will take the full cooperation of everyone from all sections of both societies including the academia, the media, the religious and business communities, the government, the congress, the senior citizens, the youth, and the public at large for this to succeed.

I am not only a businessman. I also work hard for my community. In my voluntary work, I am the chairman of the International Relations Committee of the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Jeddah is on the west coast of Saudi Arabia and is the jewel of the Red Sea. Our committee has 18 members, 7 of whom are highly qualified ladies. Our members come from different backgrounds, such as academia, media, banking and finance, international trade, industry, psychotherapy, engineering, insurance, medical care, etc .. We have active programs for our youth, senior citizens and women empowerment.

The mission of our committee is to connect Jeddah with the world to facilitate economic prosperity, spiritual understanding and multi-cultural cooperation. We wish to create a better future for ourselves and for our youth by making Jeddah a spiritual, cultural and economic city of excellence and beauty, a model of cultural understanding and integration, and a center of international dialogue.

I hope 2006 will bring us all peace, good health and prosperity. Do not always believe what you read or see in the American media. Come visit us and see for yourself, or talk to someone who has. As I have learned in your American universities, seeing is believing.

Originally published in Arab News on January 10, 2006

Amr Khashoggi is Chairman and CEO of the Amkest Group, chairman of the International Relations Committee, and an active member of the national Committee of International Trade. He has his BSc from Menlo College, Menlo Park, California (1977), and an MBA from the School of Management, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut (1979).  Khashoggi can be reached by email at amr.khashoggi<at>gmail.com