The reaction within the Kingdom was remarkable for its simultaneous restraint and schadenfreude fascination.  The Saudi Times, the Kingdom’s English language daily and a publication best known for its heavily state-influenced reporting, could not avoid featuring Egypt as its front page, column 1, above the fold news, day after day.  They struggled to find sufficiently noncommittal statements from His Highness King Abdullah, who appropriately spoke strongly in support of the Egyptian people, but stopped short of supporting an overt removal of Mubarak.

The next day, I met with a business partner for lunch and found myself in a candid conversation with a scrupulously gracious and recent Egyptian expat, roughly my contemporary, who in his candid thoughts found himself profoundly worried about events back home. At first I thought his duty to provide Arab hospitality to his visitor perhaps extended to accommodating what he knew to be the view of the US Government: namely that Mubarak, virtual dictator though he was, was relatively preferable to a destabilized and potentially radicalized Egypt. But even Arab hospitality has its philosophical limits, and my colleague showed all the signs of real conviction:  the specter of a state run by the Muslim Brotherhood, overtly hostile to the West, to the minority Egyptian Christian population, and leaning towards extremist isolationism was enough to make my friend lose his appetite.  He began smoking constantly, until his mother called.  From Egypt.  To tell him she was alright.  And then he calmed down a bit–at least for a while.  But he kept smoking.

Now that I’ve left the Kingdom, I can say that the reports on Western news media that “Saudi might be next” or that the unrest in Jordan is but a harbinger of a complete democratization of the region are at once both hopelessly optimistic (speaking of the region as a whole) and naively ignorant of the facts (speaking of the Kingdom in particular).  The Saudi monarchy bears little resemblance to the Mubarak regime: it has developed a broad-based and effective system of wealth distribution that keeps it firmly both in power and on the friendly side of what otherwise become the restless middle class bourgeousie.  It has also struck a 30-year deal with its Wahabbi extremist constituency which keeps it both in power and cloaked in the vestments of religious authority.¹  They have effectively managed diverse constituencies and, even if we know that the average Saudi is restive and possibly susceptible to persuasion by extremists to become terrorists, at the same time the monarchy has paid attention to constituencies and dynamics which Mubarek et al. chose to ignore.  For that reason alone they may receive some flak for infrastructure failures (the virtually annual Jeddah flooding and the virtually annual street protests come to mind), but they remain firmly in power and respected.  And US media theorizing notwithstanding, they show every sign of staying that way for the foreseeable future.

At the same time, Americans and others who see the recent Egypt developments as “a miracle” ought to bear in mind that this triumph of democracy has brought with it an 80 million person power vacuum.  If the Muslim Brotherhood has its way, peace treaties with Israel disappear, the Christian minority becomes a persecuted apostatic underclass, and Egypt flirts with the fate of Afghanistan after the Soviets.  We can–and should–celebrate the removal of a brutal autocrat.  But we should also brace ourselves for a messy destabilization.  If my Egyptian friend is right, most of his 80 million fellow countrymen want I peaceful, nonradical state.  On behalf of one peripatetic and worried American, I profoundly hope he and they get what they want.

1. The relationship between the House of Saud and the Wahabbis in fact stretches back nearly 300 years, but it was the Kingdom’s need for a fatwah “authorizing” their counter-attack on the dissidents who took over the Grand Mosque in 1979 which rolled back the modicum of liberalization seen in the Kingdom during the ’70s and cemented their symbiosis for decades to come.

On Thursday of last week, I flew back to San Francisco from New York.  As a regular American Airlines passenger (150,000 miles flown last year alone; 2.5 million accrued one way or another since 1986), I know the airline well and generally have few, if any complaints.  Even when three of my past five flights have been delayed, I don’t find myself complaining.  It’s a hard business.  Everyone loves to hate airlines, and until last week, I had decided to buck the trend and actually like an airline, if only because it seems to me their business is a tough one and I respect their efforts to run it well. When I got to my office on Thursday after my flight, I discovered I had left my iPad on the plane. Such stupidity is, of course, my fault and not the airline’s. It was a 6:45am flight from JFK, which required my waking up around 3:30am to get to JFK, and jammed as I was into a window seat in coach, I slept fitfully throughout much of the flight. When we arrived in San Francisco, I was thus only too eager to get off. Without my iPad.

But thanks to the wonderful “Find My iPhone” function of Apple’s MobileMe, I quickly established that my iPad was (and still is!) in Terminal 3 at SFO (the American and United terminal), and I could even track where in the building it was in real-time. I called American at the airport, figuring this was an easy problem to solve. The iPad was beeping and displaying my telephone number to anyone who found it, thanks to a message I sent it via Find My iPhone.

Nobody at American Airlines stepped up to help me solve the problem. In fact, the people who have refused to take my call, call me back, or otherwise be in touch are the customer service representatives at SFO.  Here are some details of the folly:

• The first person I spoke to, in baggage services, told me that the recovery of lost items was merely a courtesy. She chastised me for losing my item (reminding me, for example, that an announcement is made “twice, sir, to take your personal items with you” when the plane reaches the gate).  She then hung up on me as I asked her what my other options were to get help.  (Note:  California Penal Code §485 disagrees with her interpretation of her duties.¹  Jason Chen from Gizmodo can attest that the law took Apple’s side when he “recovered” a lost iPhone 4 earlier this year, for example, and Gizmodo realized the law required them to return the item to Apple.)

• The next day, I drove back to the airport and talked to everyone I could.  I showed them the location of my iPad using my mobile phone (yes, it’s an iPhone ).  I sent the missing iPad message after message and “beep signal” after “beep signal.”  Everyone was amazed at the cool technology, and indeed, I have since spoken to many people who are very pleasant.  Some even offer to help.  None of them was a customer service representative, and none took the initiative to “own” the problem and solve it.

• Today (Monday), I had to fly out of SFO on American again, so of course I took the opportunity to walk around the terminal and ask everyone I could about my lost iPad.  I showed lots of people the location of the iPad.  I gave my business card to anyone who would talk to me (even a few who thought I was a nutcase).  Still no phone calls—not even from someone saying they haven’t found it yet, but they’re trying.

By now, I have left voice mail messages for American Airlines Customer Service Managers at SFO several times.  No customer service representative (manager or otherwise) has ever called me.

All the while, I have kept in regular contact with my iPad—via Apple’s Find My iPhone.  It hasn’t run out of battery yet, and it hasn’t moved.  It’s still right there at SFO Terminal 3, beeping away whenever I send it a message.  It displays my name and phone number.  All someone needs to do is look at it and call me.

The experience has left me with one primary question:  after all the voicemails I have left and business cards I have handed out, and given direct evidence that the device is in their facility, why has nobody picked up the phone, called me, and taken the opportunity to turn this into a good customer service experience for a very good customer? (Reminder, I fly about 150,000 miles a year with these people.)   After all, I have made it clear to everyone I have spoken to that I am not blaming the airline—quite the contrary, I’m the idiot who left it on the plane.  But we know where this thing is, and after five days of nobody taking responsibility for returning it to me, the burden of responsibility for a bad experience has shifted.  It is not beyond American Airlines to find a device in their own secure area at their own terminal when that device can be tracked by GPS and made to emit a loud noise whenever their customer tells it to.

All they have to do is call their customer.

update 8/11/2010:  Believe it or not, the iPad still has battery, six days later.  It’s still at SFO, still reporting back to me.  Despite this blog piece, and despite tweets with @AAirWaves and calling endlessly, nobody has yet called me, even to explain that they’re still working on it.

1. The pertinent section of California Penal Code §485 reads: “One who finds lost property under circumstances which give him knowledge of or means of inquiry as to the true owner, and who appropriates such property to his own use, or to the use of another person not entitled thereto, without first making reasonable and just efforts to find the owner and to restore the property to him, is guilty of theft.”

Asif Hassan/Agence France-Presse – Getty Images

Insidious forces of extremism continue to erode core Pakistani political and governmental functions.  Indeed, this particular suicide attack focused on Karachi, which lies at the southwestern-most end of Pakistan and, along with the rest of Sindh Province, has enjoyed relative peace and tranquility since the high profile attacks against Western targets it saw in 2002.  These attacks thus portend a serious escalation of the destabilization–and all of this despite (or perhaps because of–keep reading!) a continued US commitment to the region in the form of a time-limited commitment to Afghanistan.  Indeed, today’s Associated Press notes the recent increase in Haqqani network attacks on Pakistani intelligence and security operatives in North Waziristan is further straining US-Pakistani relations.  (The Haqqani network is an Al-Quaeda linked Afghani Taliban faction operating on both sides of the Afghan/Pakistan border.  Its increased activity may or may not be a result of an increased US activity in Afghanistan, but its recent impact on Pakistani ISI is nonetheless serious and potentially the source of some Pakistani concern over US activity.)

As well-known Washington Post correspondent David Ignatius pointed during a fascinating session at the recent Leading Thinkers Washington Forum on US-Pakistan relations, Pakistan both welcomes increased US commitment to Afghan stability (and thus to avoiding Afghanistan’s return to the status of a failed state), but also has cause for concern because of the possibility that more US troop pressure in southeastern Afghanistan will result in more insurgent activity both in the Swat valley (to the northeast) and in Pakistan’s Waziri provinces (to the northwest)–via a kind of chaotic osmosis destined to bring only increased threats to Pakistani stability.

One way or another, the conclusion is clear and worrisome:  Pakistan is heating up, and the US’s “Afghan Surge” has not quelled the hostility or the unrest.  If anything, the unintended short-term consequence of the US efforts in Afghanistan may be increased internal tension and terrorist activity in Pakistan.  Let’s hope we can complete the task in Afghanistan sufficiently quickly to avoid permanent destabilization of its neighbor to the south.

There was something surreal about watching President Obama take the oath of office from a hotel room in Karachi, Pakistan. Several times, I wondered whether there were more suicide bomb barriers surrounding his dais or my hotel. Suicide bombers had nearly destroyed the hotel a year or two earlier, and the predictable reaction—to erect sufficient vehicle barriers to stop more than one simultaneous attack—had of course been implemented. And so I watched, from 13,000 miles away, as America took what I profoundly hope will be the first of many steps towards reestablishing its international reputation as a symbol of freedom, all the while knowing that I was under strict orders from our hosts not to leave the building.

All around me were little security instruction sheets, thoughtfully Xeroxed by the hotel staff and placed in every room. From the typical (“this water is unsafe for drinking; kindly enjoy the complimentary bottle of mineral water provided”) to the stern (“do not stand on balcony; snipers may be active”), the warnings combined to deliver the message that, thanks to the efforts of less than 1% of the population, Westerners are simply not welcome in Pakistan. 99% of Pakistanis we met were hopeful, interesting people, happy to talk to an American (and to ask us about our new president—more about that in a different post). But all I had to do was look out my hotel room window to realize that it is the 1% who rule the country.

View from my Karachi Hotelroom

As they so often do, this picture tells the story better than I can. The balcony is enclosed in a net, lest grenades be thrown up onto the landing. The wires above the pool are for god-knows-what security technique. (My guess: since they are either grounded or energized, probably an anti-eavesdropping measure which doubles as a mechanism for defeating radio frequency bomb triggers, although my mobile phone worked just fine underneath them, so perhaps not.) There were magnetometers, x-ray machines in the lobby, and nearly every entrance to every building was peopled by thoroughly un-reasuring armed guards. There were small trucks parked in the parking lots of both “Western” hotels, each filled with four chain-smoking Pakistani infantrymen, on top of which was mounted what looked like an M60 (.50 caliber machine gun). Two bomb-sniffing Labrador retrievers worked the parking lot. ID checks were performed endlessly.

I doubt that any experience since 9/11 has reminded me that this really is a war. Not a war which gives our government the right to abrogate our Constitution, but a war nonetheless. And until it ends, Americans traveling abroad had better remember that the actions of our own government (and in particular the recently-departed administration) catalyze reactions abroad which pose as grave a threat to our well-being as any other. (Until 2002, there had been no attacks against Western targets in Karachi. That all started after we reacted to 9/11.) In the end, no matter how hopeful I am that the inauguration of President Obama will set us off to righting our standing worldwide, we will remain “the enemy” for a long time to come.

And then there are a few I don’t quite get:

…a few that that are simply too good to be true…

(My heart goes out to this poor scaffolding.  I recommend Valium or perhaps something in a nice benzodiazipene, under the circumstances.)

…and now for some parting thoughts and a dose of British advise:

One slightly sad point: the beautiful iguanas (green iguanas to be precise) you see above are the target of serious resident-led zoocide (hereptocide?). Evidently, these beautiful and utterly harmless but nonetheless exogenous creatures leave droppings in inconvenient places, and this causes them to attract the ire of local residents. (They come out around 11:00am every day to sun themselves and raise their body temperatures; they generally head “home” around 3:00pm.) At least for this tourist, getting a chance to see a few “wild” iguanas while I was relaxing was a lot of fun, and I can’t imagine why anybody would begrudge them their sun-bathing. Bah Humbug!