In the corner shop the other week I got chatting to the owner. After a while, I remarked that his English was very good. With typical Korean modesty, he refused the complimnet with the explanation: "I worked as an engineer in Saudi Arabia, working with westerners. But that was twenty years ago and I've forgotten a lot." Like most of what he said, this was grammatically perfect.
I thought of the shopkeeper on Sunday when news broke of the attack on a compound for foreign workers in the Saudi city of Khobar. In light of the spate of recent attacks on foreign workers in the Kingdom, I doubt he regrets his career move.
Those who carried out the attack at the weekend, have explicitly stated that their goal is to drive the foreign workers out of the peninsula. Their logic is simple: by scaring off immigrant workers they undermine the economy which props up what they see as the corrupt and un-Islamic House of Saud. It's hard to fault their logic. I'm sure that for foreign workers the money in Saudi Arabia is good but, as the old saying goes, "you can't take it with you".
The international workforce in Saudi Arabia is so large that the economy simply could not function without it. Not just the Western engineers who work in the oil industry, but also the large number of workers from countries like Pakistan who clean the houses and sweep the streets.
Why is the Saudi economy so dangerously reliant on the work of non-citizens? I can see why the menial jobs are filled by non-Saudis. In rich countries all over the world, from Canada, to Germany, to Taiwan, there comes a point when not enough local people want to do certain jobs because they are either too unpleasant, too poorly-paid, or too physically demanding. So workers from poorer countries come in, just grateful for the chance to earn money.
OK, no mystery there. I understand why Saudis are unwilling to sweep their own streets. But why are they incapable of extracting their own oil? It's not as if they just discovered oil there a few years ago. Saudi Arabia has had generations in which to build up native expertise in the oil business and yet they have singularly failed to do so.
Why is this the case? I know that some will jump to the conclusion that the Saudis' educational backwardness is a result of their Arabness, either because they are somehow racially stupid or because they are culturally disinclined to education. To me, this is nonsense.
One need only look at the example of the Palestinians to see that Arabs and eduction are far from strangers. Every year the Palestinians produce large numbers of fine doctors, teachers, lawyers, engineers and other professionals who go on to find work all over the world. This in spite of the fact that the universities of the West Bank and Gaza operate under restrictions unknown to third-level institutions elsewhere in the world.
Places such as Birzeit University in Ramallah and Al-Najah in Nablus are internationally renowned in spite of the fact that their students must learn against a backdrop of checkpoints, curfews and closures; to say nothing of the economic and psychological impact which the Israeli occupation has on young Palestinians.
Yet the Palestinians and the Saudis are both equally Arab. Why is it that one people, living in war and poverty, can produce so many professionals, while another, living in peace and prosperity, can produce so few?
I don't know the answer to this question. I'm far from being an expert on either the oil industry or the Saudi kingdom but, the world would be a much duller place if the only opinions people offered were informed ones, so here goes:
If I took the time to research it, I'm certain I'd find many reasons to explain the lack of educational achievement in Saudi Arabia. I'm also quite sure that Western governments and business would not come out smelling of roses. Nevertheless, there seems to be one reason which is abundantly obvious - the role, or rather non-role, of women in Saudi society.
I may not know much about Suaid Arabia, but I do know that it's not a good place to be a woman with ambition. The government's adherence to the strict Wahabbi sect of Islam closes off many career paths to those who don't happen to possess the "correct" genitalia. Given that the Kingdom excludes half of its population from pursuing careers which could benefit its oil industry, is it any wonder that it is so reliant on foreign workers?
Perhaps this is the key reason, I don't know. But I do know that the universities of occupied Palestine abound with female students.