Prince Abdullah Bin Faisal Bin Turki Al-Saud

By Richard H. Curtiss

You've probably seen him if you follow televised events from the Middle East. You may not have realized, however, that the unassuming but articulate and self-possessed Saudi "government official" explaining to English-speaking television audiences everything from the ecological effects of oil spills in the Gulf to the impact of Desert Shield/Desert Storm on day-to-day life in the desert kingdom is a grandson of its founder.

Prince Abdullah Bin Faisal Bin Turki Al-Saud has never been an official spokesman for his government. In fact, his training is as an engineer. At present he is chairman of the Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu, responsible for administering all logistical services to the Kingdom's two showplace industrial cities, Jubail with 50,000 inhabitants and Yanbu with 30,000.

The former, near Saudi Arabia's Gulf oil fields, and the latter, 1,500 miles to the west where the trans-Arabian pipeline reaches the Red Sea, are the sites of major petrochemical industries the world's largest oil producing country has developed to utilize the surplus energy and by-products of its oil refining operations.

The writer long ago discovered why the man whose organization arranges logistical support for these gigantic enterprises producing such products as chemical fertilizers and plastics so often serves as one of the world's windows into his homeland. In 1985, while making a film about the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, the writer was escorted by the press attaché of the US Embassy in Riyadh to Royal Commission headquarters to make arrangements for an American camera crew to visit Jubail.

In conversation after the formalities were completed, the prince, whose mother is a full sister to Saudi Arabia's ruler, King Fahd, and who is an extremely gregarious and hospitable man, explained the uniqueness of his vast but sparsely populated country. Since the seventh century AD, it has been the spiritual center of Islam, which, with Christianity, is one of the world's two largest religions. Currently Islam also is the world's (and America's) fastest-growing religion, and Saudi Arabia hosts up to 2 million foreign pilgrims to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina annually.

Saudi Arabia now also finds itself at the center of the global economy. It is the source of more than a third of worldwide OPEC petroleum production, and it has the world's largest proven petroleum reserves.

Its relationship to the United States also is unique, the prince explained. From the moment his grandfather, King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, chose American geologists and engineers to find, extract and market his country's oil, Saudi Arabia has preferred the United States for everything from the education of its children to consumer goods and, most recently, its military defenses. After listening to him speak, I not only took my camera crew to Jubail, I also took it to Riyadh and did an interview with Prince Abdullah that became a centerpiece of the Saudi portion of the film.

For a subsequent film about Saudi Arabia, I asked him to describe the formative role of his remarkable maternal grandfather in the unification of the Arabian peninsula. In a five-hour series of films about his country made a decade ago by producer Jo Franklin Trout, he played a similar explanatory role, even demonstrating on camera how to adjust the kefflyah, the Arab headdress worn by all Saudis. More recently, as literally hundreds of journalists from all over the world arrived to report on the Gulf war, Prince Abdullah made a point of introducing them to other Saudis at almost daily breakfasts, lunches or dinners in Jubail, or at bedouin-style barbeques at his "camp" in the desert east of Riyadh.

He played a leading role himself in that war. It was his Royal Commission that kept the vast oil slick released into the Gulf by the fighting in Kuwait from fouling the Kingdom's largest water desalination plants on the Gulf shores at Jubail.

Prince Abdullah Bin Faisal Bin Turki AlSaud was born in the Saudi summer capital of Taif in 1951 into a family directly descended from Saud Bin Faisal, whose rule, along with that of his brother Abdullah, marked the end of the second Saudi state after an invasion of Ottoman Turks and their Egyptian vassals early in the 19th century.

Prince Abdullah is the eldest of four brothers and three sisters. His elementary and secondary schooling was in Saudi Arabia, and he went to England for higher education.

"I was forced to do engineering by my father, " he explains, almost apologetically. "I didn't really know what I wanted. I did it because at that time everyone wanted an education, and my father wanted me to get a technical education. " What he most enjoyed, however, was the practical work in British industry included in the course.

"I thought the best thing was the human experience of actually working in a factory, " the prince explains. "That was more interesting." It also, perhaps, made him almost as fluent in English as in Arabic.

When he returned to Saudi Arabia 15 years ago, he joined the newly-established Royal Commission. He progressed rapidly from engineer in the technical department to manpower studies coordinator, and then manager and subsequently director of industrial security, which is the capacity in which I first met him.

In 1985 he became acting secretary general of the commission and, two years later, he was appointed secretary-general. This year he became chairman. He has seen the number of factories in Jubail and Yanbu multiply, and he has dealt with contractors representing 120 separate countries. Nevertheless, the tilt toward America remains.

"We have employed what we called management services contractors, which were mostly Americans," Prince Abdullah explains. "It was because they were used to very large construction projects."

He, his wife and their four children frequently visit London, and work brings Prince Abdullah to the United States at least twice a year.

It is the contrast between perceptions of Saudi Arabia among Americans who work in the Kingdom and those he met in the United States that got the prince involved in helping journalists visiting his homeland.

"There's never been a country where the perception is so different from the reality, " he explains. "Perhaps we aren't doing enough to tell people about ourselves."

It is his personal determination to introduce journalists to the realities of his country that time again ends up with him speaking into television cameras. He confesses he's done many more such interviews than he can count since the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

"I've always had a complex about the image of the Arabs and Saudi Arabia, " Prince Abdullah explains. "Particularly because the image of the Arabs has been bad. I feel we lost a lot of political ground because of perceptions people have.

"It's one reason the Palestinian cause did not get enough backing internationally. Why, for example, did Israel get a lot of support in the 1940s, '50s and'60s? Why didn't the Palestinians get a fair hearing? It was because of how they reflected themselves. By contrast, the Black Africans in South Africa got so much public support that the government there changed its policies.

"I've always felt that we were unfairly presented. Then, unfortunately, religious extremists managed to take power in one or two places and use Islam for political purposes and as an anti-Western thing. No doubt some supporters of Israel contributed to the destruction of the Arab image in the West. But I've always felt a nagging need to explain about the Arabs, and particularly about the Palestinian question, and about the societies of the Arab countries.

"Perhaps, as one who was educated partly in Europe—and you know how the image of Americans was there—I see how images can be changed through exposure. The image of the US military that existed in the outsider's mind was a cross between Dr. Strangelove and John Wayne. But when I met them the reality was the opposite.

"Here, we've known Americans for a very long time, and a lot of Saudis were very comfortable mixing with Americans, getting their educations in the United States, doing business with Americans, and marrying Americans. Our positive impressions were reinforced over many years by the behavior of the Americans here, including during the recent military buildup. It was almost impeccable. In fact, I've made more friends in the 10 years that I've been visiting the United States than I've made in Europe, where I've stayed longer."

"I've always felt a nagging need to explain about the Arabs."

Prince Abdullah's positive outlook about both Americans and Palestinians made him optimistic about the prospect of a settlement even before President Bush's recent initiative to tie US aid to Israel to the peace process.

"I hope Americans will carry through with their intent to get the Palestinian problem solved," he says. "And I hope they'll be sensitive to the fact that, although some of the PLO leadership discredited itself in the eyes of some governments, and even in the eyes of many Palestinians, that does not lessen the legitimacy of Palestinian expectations."

Both as a Saudi and as a government official, Prince Abdullah is proud of his government's work on behalf of the Palestinians.

"We've never supported the Palestinians just for the short term," he explains. "Nobody, actually, has done more for the Palestinian cause than Saudi Arabia, and not just the government but also Saudi individuals. I don't want to boast because what we've done is not something we should be thanked for. I hope we can do more."

When I visited his home during the Gulf war, the prince and his mother also were working to find positions in Saudi Arabia for the many Oriental refugees displaced from Kuwait. Those who wanted to go home were helped to secure passage.

For members of the royal family, such good works "are assumed to be a duty," Prince Abdullah explains. "When we are brought up, responsibilities are drilled into us. But we understand that what you can do and how well you do it is up to you."

Asked about decision-making in Saudi Arabia, Prince Abdullah says that since 1940 his country has been "run by government departments and institutions. The council of ministers is the day-to-day authority in the country. There are three or four members of the royal family among some 20 members of the council of ministers.

"As with many things in our society, people consult with a lot of people, and it has been this way for a long time. The top leadership is responsible for national policy, be it foreign or domestic, and they do a lot of consensus building on many issues.

"Nor do they get to these policy-making positions easily. If you look at the service records of people like the king, the crown prince, and the second deputy, each one has been in public service for between 40 and 50 years. And that's important.

"They know the country well. It was at their level that they decided to concentrate initially on social policy and on providing general utilities and services for the public, and then on an economic infrastructure."

The Saudi government now is faced with problems at two levels, according to Prince Abdullah. "On the political side, we must work to solve regional problems, particularly in the aftermath of this crisis. There are bad feelings between peoples and between governments that we must put behind us.

"On the economic side, we must decide how to continue the development effort with a severely restricted government income. We must find ways to activate the tremendous liquidity available in the private sector through innovative management."

Prince Abdullah, who hopes to retire early and go into private life himself, is optimistic that these problems will be solved and that the future will be bright for his two sons, Turki, age 9, and Salman, age 7, and two daughters, Eleanoude, 3, and Sarah, 2, all of whom he hopes to instill with the same tradition of duty with which he was raised.

"Our family has had a prominent and leading role in the politics of the Central Arabian peninsula for 300 years or so, " he says. "It's not apolitical institution, entity or party. But I hope that our family has been a positive influence in this part of the world."

Richard H. Curtiss is the executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.