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Saudi Exodus Grows

By Ewen MacAskill

24 June, 2004
The Guardian

Western firms are offering substantial sums of "danger money" to expatriate staff in Saudi Arabia to stem a panic-driven exodus from the kingdom in the wake of al-Qaida attacks.

The Guardian has learned that one of the biggest firms in the country, the British-owned defence company BAE Systems, is offering each of its 2,400 expatriate staff an extra £1,000 a month to stay. A BAE Systems source in Riyadh said the money was intended to compensate for disruption. "It recognises that these are difficult times," he said.

The source added that it would help those families having to find rented property in Britain at short notice while those who remained in the kingdom, both families and singles, also needed recompense for the constraints on their freedom of movement. The payments are to continue indefinitely.

The beheading last week of the US engineer Paul Johnson has had a profound impact on the expat community and has threatened to turn the stream of departures from Riyadh, Khobar, Dharan and Jeddah over the past few months into a flood.

In interviews with the Guardian, several workers in Riyadh and Jeddah suggested that the numbers who have already left or are planning to leave are much higher than has yet been reported.

One businessman in Riyadh who is planning to leave after almost 20 years said foreign residents had been "spooked" by Mr Johnson's kidnapping. Another Briton said occupancy in the 50 to 60 compounds in Riyadh favoured by westerners had dropped by between 5% and 15%.

A British businessman, a long-term resident of Riyadh, said he was sending his family home and brushing up his CV in the hope of leaving in the next three to four months. "I don't know anyone who is thinking of staying. The kidnapping was astonishing. It was a gruesome death."

The businessman, who like other expatriates requested anonymity, said companies such as BAE Systems needed to prevent an implosion of their staff because they stood to lose significant amounts of money if they were unable to fulfil their contracts with the Saudis.

A mass departure would be a political embarrassment for the Saudi government and a victory for al-Qaida. It would also seriously disrupt the economy, with potential knock-on effects on oil prices.

In a reflection of the pressure the regime is under, the Saudi government last night offered a one-month amnesty for any al-Qaida members to give themselves up. If they did, they would escape the death penalty. The offer was made by the de facto ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah, on behalf of the incapacitated autocrat, his half-brother, King Fahd, in a broadcast on state television.

The Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al Faisal, at a press conference in Jeddah yesterday, said he hoped the exodus will not happen. "I think Saudi Arabia will do everything it can to show the country remains a safe place for experts to work," he said.

The foreign minister played down the flight of expatriates, portraying it as an annual exodus home for the school holidays and to escape the summer heat.

The scale will not be determined until September when they are scheduled to return from their breaks.

The Saudi government hope is that if there was to be a decrease in violence over the summer, some of those who left intending not to return might reconsider.

There are 30,000 British in Saudi Arabia and 40,000 Americans, almost all of them living in fortified compounds.

As well as high walls, barbed wire and concrete blocks to prevent suicide bombings, they are guarded by soldiers hidden behind sandbags and by armoured vehicles with machine guns.

One of the few expatriates interviewed prepared to go on the record, Roger Harrison, a British photojournalist with the Arab News in Jeddah, said: "There are more leaving than people are letting on."

Places such as coffee shops, pizza restaurants and other haunts are avoided by westerners fearful of becoming another al-Qaida target.

An American businessman in Jeddah said: "There is a lot more tension. We keep looking over our shoulders. A lot of us only go from work to the compound and back."

Expatriates try to minimise the risk by not travelling alone and avoiding dressing too obviously like westerners.

The headquarters of a well-known US company in a prominent location in Riyadh looks normal from the outside but it is virtually empty inside. Fearful of an attack, one of the staff said yesterday that two senior expatriate workers relocated last week to Bahrain and its Saudi staff have been told to work from home.

A British health worker in Riyadh said yesterday she was shipping her furniture and other goods home in preparation for a sudden departure along with her partner. She said the prospect of being killed was bad enough but it was the prospect of being taken hostage that rattled her and others in the capital. "The attacks are not random. They know where they live and work and when they go home. That is why they are able to pick them up."

She said "masalama" (goodbye) parties to sell off household goods used to be relatively infrequent but in her circle they were now running at about four to five a week. "There is kitchenware, garden furniture, children's stuff. A kiddie's car seat. A Jaguar went up for sale," she said.

The departures fall into various categories. There are those who have resigned and left, and those working out their notice or trying to negotiate an end to their contracts without incurring penalties. There are others who have sent their families home and will remain on their own.

Others are relocating to neighbouring states such as the United Arab Emirates or Bahrain, intending to commute to Saudi Arabia. And there are others, mainly singles, prepared to hang on.

Mr Harrison, who has been in Saudi for eight years, said he would be among the last to leave but will consider his options if violence continued: "Before, Saudi was a challenge but boring and safe. The atmosphere has changed. There's no going back."





© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004