Culture shock as war clouds gather in the Gulf, and Arabs glower

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – It’s less than an hour and a half by Saudi Airlines jet from Riyadh, but the minute you step off your plane and glide into the all-glass-and-chrome "Kind Rashid" Dubai International Airport you know you’re in another world.

After a week immersed in puritanical Islam, you gawk – your… er, sense of modesty and decorum instilled by Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi Ikhwan inspired strictures on how the female form should be swathed in black from neck to toe, and visage heavily veiled – is outraged.

Here are few "Women in Black." (No way for GMA, for that kind of magazine cover!) You see, horrors, women in shorts: Good grief, they’ve shed their abayas, those garments designed to protect one’s womenfolk from the leering male eye. Of course, all the offenders in shorts are bound to be Western women, either European or American. Indeed, some of the lissom Saudi teenagers who step off your same aircraft from Riyadh remain in abaya black, but you know that long before they get to the Al Maktoum Bridge that crosses the creek into this high-rise city of chopping and sybaritism, they’ll have shucked their confining garment and emerged from their cocoon in designer dresses, or designer tops and jeans. Behind the veil and enshrouded by the mystery of shapeless modesty, often lurk beautiful girls.

This is not to say that Islam does not dominate the seven states which comprise the United Arab Emirates (known generally as U.A.E.). The official religion is Islam, and the "Emiratis", as they’re called sometimes, are Sunni Muslims. But here, other religious are – as their own guidebook says – "tolerated". You can carry a Rosary, or Christian Bible without being accused of proselytizing. Sus, you can even buy and imbibe liquor – shucks, even Johnny Walker Blue, whereas you are not permitted to bring in or import even chocolate candy into Saudi Arabia which may have liquor-filling inside.

To each his own, I say. If Saudi’s muttawwas, their stern religious or "morals" police – some 40,000 strong – who roam the streets and souks to enforce Islamic rules and make certain that all shops close down and the lights go off during each hour of prayer (five times a day) – Allah bless them!

The first thing this old war-hawk learned in decades of foreign reporting is to never argue about religion. One has to follow his own beliefs and convictions – or even his disbelief. And when Allah, or God, or Yahweh, or the great Gautama commands, that is the voice of the supreme Deity.

As for me, although I’ve long ago given up hard drink, I’ll still take likker and chocolates. After all, Jesus’ first miracle in Cana was to transform water into wine. Here in the Middle East, though, water is becoming scarcer and more precious than wine.

In Saudi Arabia, they’ve just appointed a Minister for Water. They already have a Minister for petroleum, oil, et cetera, but that they have aplenty, almost a third of the world’s known reserves.

Saudi Arabia has tackled the problem of water head-on. The country is now the biggest producer of desalinated water in the world, operating 30 desalination plants in 15 sites along the Arabian Gulf and the Red Sea. The Saudis now produce, it’s said, some 200 billion gallons of water per year. This very expensive way of providing 70 percent of a nation’s water needs (water is piped 600 to 1,000 kilometers, by the way, through arid desert) is possible only if you’re oil-rich. For the Saudis, water is not an option – it is a dire necessity. So they do it. And the water that gushes from your faucet there is clean and pure.

Two-thirds of those desalination plants (they have the largest plants in the planet) constitute "dual system" plants, meaning they also produce electricity – generating at least a third of the Saudi Kingdom’s requirements. Which is why all Riyadh and Jeddah are brightly-lighted until way past midnight.

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THE ROVING EYE . . . What I can report is that almost everybody in this area – particularly the Arabs – opposes America’ impending "attack" on Iraq. They know it’s coming. They both don’t like it – and fear it. They’re also condemning Israel for the IDF’s continuing assaults on the Palestinians. Yet this is to be expected. When war erupts, on a more immediate note, the oil fields are threatened – and too often burned.

I wonder why so few seem to remember the terrible things the Iraqis of Saddam Insane did when they invaded Kuwait and fought the Gulf War. They torched all of Kuwait’s oil wells and deliberately turned the taps on to spill eight million barrels of oil into the Gulf. This inestimable oil spill befouled the waters of Kuwait, Iran, and much of Saudi Arabia’s own costline. The food chain and the fisheries industries of these countries were damaged immeasurably. Even the industrial zone of Jubail in Saudi’s eastern province was in danger of shutdown, and the seawater-fed desalination plants in the area were almost choked down. Seven hundred Kuwaiti oil wells going up in smoke further created such a gagging level of atmospheric pollution that many fell ill – and some died.

Yet, Saddam is now a "hero" to many Arabs! In contrast, the son of the elder George Bush who came to save Kuwait and the rest of the region from Iraqi depredations is the Great Satan. Oh, well, that’s life. Memories are short. Gratitude is fleeting. Onward to the next war! Anyway, as Big Mac (MacArthur) said: There is no substitute for victory. If you lose, you’re gone. If you win, everybody rushes to befriend you.