Posted on 07/02/2003 11:47:35 PM PDT by JohnHuang2
If July 4th is a little sweeter in Fresno this summer, it's for good reason. Only days ago this California city was the site of an early Independence Day, when 24-year-old Sarah Saga stepped off a plane onto the first American soil she'd touched since being taken to Saudi Arabia at age six.
Her freedom affords two timely lessons. The first is that Washington is fully capable of arranging the liberation of our women and children held in Saudi Arabia against their will, with the right backbone. The second lesson is that someone needs to light some firecrackers under the State Department if the many others still trapped there -- including Ms. Saga's two young children -- are ever to taste their freedom.
That much was clear from Maura Harty's appearance last Thursday before the Senate. When asked about the status of an American child trapped inside the Kingdom, the head of State's Bureau of Consular Affairs promised a "never-ending conversation" with the Saudis. And that's precisely the problem.
At that same hearing Senator Blanche Lincoln questioned why "a high-ranking official like Secretary Harty" finds herself negotiating with criminals, i.e., men who abduct their children to Saudi Arabia and keep them there, sometimes even as adults, in defiance of U.S. law. The Arkansas Democrat's reference was to 10-year-old Heidi al-Omary, who was kidnapped by her Saudi father at age five. A "never-ending conversation," or even an occasional visit from her American mother, is not going to help Heidi in a land where she's now close to marriage age.
It's also worth recalling how little diplomacy alone has achieved in freeing these Americans. Much of the time when some American succeeds in leaving Saudi Arabia, it's been from an escape -- not infrequently with hired commandos. The only reason Ms. Saga is out today is because public pressure from sustained coverage by this newspaper and hearings chaired by Indiana Republican Dan Burton elicited promises from both U.S. Ambassador Robert Jordan and Prince Saud al-Faisal.
Last August, Ambassador Jordan told a visiting Burton delegation in Riyadh that no American woman seeking refuge at an embassy would ever be thrown out on his watch. Prince Saud later followed by telling them that henceforth any American woman who wished to leave could. State tells us that this is working, that some Americans who couldn't get out before have now done so. That is good news. But surely it is also confirmation that the Saudis respond only to pressure.
Some of the treatment Ms. Saga received at the hands of her own government, moreover, is hardly reassuring. Some was just plain petty, such as charging her for food for her and her children -- which State promises will not happen again. Some is astonishing, such as our diplomats' bringing three men from the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the room where Ms. Saga and her two children were sleeping -- as opposed to meeting them in an office or conference room. It's not hard to imagine how intimidating the presence of these men in that room would be to a woman in such circumstances.
Finally, although State says that in all its "discussions and contacts with the Saudis we took the clear position that the children should be permitted to travel with their mother," the copy of the letter sent to Prince Saud by Charge d'Affaires Margaret Scobey mentions only that Ms. Saga "asks to bring her two children," not the U.S. government.
As we have mentioned before we do not believe that Saudi fathers should be cut off from their children. In most divorce cases, parents work out some kind of sharing arrangement. What makes the Saudi case a state issue is a Saudi government that protects Saudi fathers who abduct or keep their kids in violation of custody agreements and that puts American mothers in an impossible position. As State confirms, "the commitment of the Saudi Government to the travel of U.S. citizen women has not extended to the children of those women."
We don't mean to beat up on Ms. Harty. The problem is inherent to the culture of the State Department, where the interests of ordinary Americans, however desperate, will likely always be trumped by "larger" diplomatic concerns. Which explains why even after all this negative exposure, our government allows Saudi Arabia to hold innocent American women and children with virtually no punitive consequences. State tells us it has imposed modified restrictions on Saudis involved in child abduction, but denying an American visa to a person already guilty of abduction is not likely to serve as much of a spur to action. How about linking American visas for any Saudi citizens to the freedom of innocent Americans in Saudi Arabia?
The only real way to end this "never-ending conversation" is by shifting this portfolio from State to the Justice Department, which presumably would take a more aggressive approach to affronts to U.S. law and sovereignty. And we hope that when Mr. Burton returns next week from his own July 4 holiday to convene new hearings, that will be atop the agenda.
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