Posted on 02/06/2002 11:34:05 PM PST by JohnHuang2
When two U.S. missionaries were held captive in Afghanistan, Americans prayed for their release. Thankfully – perhaps even miraculously – they were freed.
When a U.S. journalist was kidnapped in Pakistan recently, it became the center of American news coverage … and still is.
Yet, for the last 16 years, two American citizens have spent their childhood – and now their early adulthood – captive in Saudi Arabia without so much as a whimper of meaningful protest from U.S. officials, nor the attention of the media.
It's a scandal that exposes the charade of America's supposed concern about women's rights – which we have heard so much about since the war in Afghanistan.
I'm talking about the plight of Alia and Aisha al-Gheshayan. They were kidnapped, abducted, stolen from their mother's care in a Chicago suburb in 1986, in defiance of a U.S. court order, by their father, Khalid al-Gheshayan when they were 7 and 3 respectively. Today, they are adult women – and still prevented from leaving the Saudi kingdom, where women have no rights.
Alia, now 23, has been married off to a cousin of her father. Plans are in place to marry off Aisha, 19.
Their mother, Pat Roush, has done everything you could expect – and then some – to aid her daughters. She has lobbied four different State Departments. She has organized failed mercenary rescue missions. She has worked with members of Congress. She has tried desperately to make her story public and rally the support of the American people.
Still, the girls languish in an Islamic Arabian hell that tolerates slavery, aids and abets anti-American terrorism and uses the two girls as bargaining chips in its endless gamesmanship with a revolving door of U.S. diplomats.
Pat Roush has seen her daughters once in 16 years. She was allowed to visit the kingdom under strict supervision in 1995 for a few minutes alone with the girls.
The girls made it very clear they wanted out. They wanted to come home to America. Yet, they are denied visas and passports – even though they are clearly American citizens held against their will.
Pat Roush blanches when she hears President Bush and his wife, Laura, talk today about what the war in Afghanistan has done for the rights of Afghan women.
"It was just political posturing," she says. "They're so concerned about Afghan women's rights, what about American women's rights?"
In all this time, she says, not one U.S. official has stood up and demanded that Saudi Arabia let her daughters go – to make their own choice about where they will live.
"The Saudis respect power and dignity," she explains. "And the United States has never once demonstrated power and dignity with regard to this case."
Pat Roush lives in California now. Her two U.S. senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, constantly champion women's rights. Yet, they won't give Pat Roush the time of day. They won't meet with her. They won't communicate with her.
Women's rights is apparently an abstract concept to Feinstein and Boxer – one that serves a political purpose, one that empowers them as spokespeople and heroines in a corrupt American political process. But they won't lift a finger to assist two American women held captive by a totalitarian regime protected by U.S. troops.
Pat Roush's hopes today are diminishing. Yet she is relentless in her pursuit of freedom for her daughters.
Her quest today focuses on Rep. Dan Burton's House Government Reform Committee, which is examining abuses by the U.S. State Department. Pat Roush thinks Burton wants to help and can help.
She pleads for your intervention on her behalf and on behalf of her daughters.
It's time to make some noise for Alia and Aisha. It's time to make the U.S. government live up to its commitment to protect U.S. citizens. It's time to light some fires.
Will you help?
Here are some sensitive political pressure points:
Rep. Dan Burton, chairman of the House Government Reform Committee. E-mail Rep. Burton here.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. E-mail Sen. Feinstein here.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. E-mail Sen. Boxer here.
Pat Roush also needs your prayers and your encouragement. If you can help her in any way, e-mail her now.
Saudi Arabia and the International Sex Slave Trade
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