Saudis and Nationality... And Us

From the Daily Times comes news that the Saudis have denied granting nationality to a Pakistani man's children, even though they were born in Saudi Arabia, and their mother is a Saudi national:

Saudi Arabia has denied citizenship to the daughters of a Pakistani man and his Saudi wife, highlighting the kingdom’s continued employment of gender-biased laws...

The Shoura Council recently approved legislation whereby Saudi citizenship is now to be granted to foreign-born wives and widows of Saudi men. However, the problem, as Mohammed Noor Baksh — a 60-year-old Pakistani driver married for the last 27 years to a Saudi woman — discovered is that the new legislation fails to afford citizenship to the non-Saudi husbands of Saudi women. But even in such cases, the law still offers more protection to the male children of non-Saudi fathers. Boys, on reaching 18 years of age, are eligible to apply for citizenship. By contrast, the only hope for girls to attain citizenship is if they marry a Saudi man.

Guess what, Daily Times? That's the exact same law in Pakistan. In fact, there were moves to change this law in parliament recently, by members of the People's Party - but the government party refused to allow this change. Too bad we recently missed a chance at rectifying the kingdom's, oops I mean Pakistan's "continued employment of gender-biased laws."

PIA Mystery Solved - Kind Of

A news item in the Pakistani press may shed some light on the PIA mystery. It appears that the Pakistani government has now offered to buy a number of Airbuses from Europe to replace part of its aging fleet. This would allay any security concerns that the EU has. How funny. I guess all we needed was to reassure them that they're boss, and that we're willing to plow millions of dollars from the impoverished treasury of Pakistan into the already-swollen coffers of the EU countries. Pakistan's treasury is already under deep pressure as another report noted that Pakistan's public and external debt have ballooned over 50% since 1999.

So it seems that PIA can fly to Europe unfettered. But this naked display of greed on the part of the EU creates more problems in turn. Because if PIA buys Airbuses, it might appear like a snub to Boeing and our US masters. So what's the beleaguered national airline to do? Well, there are apparently moves to reassure the Americans - behind the scenes, of course - that PIA will retain some of its Boeing planes and might buy a couple of new ones to make it all look just peachy.

Oh wait - you say that PIA is Pakistan's airline, right? It should be serving the people of Pakistan first and foremost? My, how old-fashioned of you.