July 16, 2003

Readers of this newspaper are familiar with Sarah Saga, the American who was kidnapped to Saudi Arabia as a child but returned to the U.S. in June after an escape to our consulate in Jeddah. But she is far from alone. Another American mom sought refuge at the same consulate only days before Ms. Saga. And the State Department now tells us that three other Americans have sought safe harbor at various U.S. diplomatic missions inside the Kingdom.

In hearings before the House last week, State's Maura Harty testified that the Saudis are now granting exit visas to American women who ask for them. We understand that the Saudi government is even twisting the arms of Saudi husbands to get them to grant this permission. That's welcome news. But it is not nearly enough.

For one thing, it still leaves a fundamental freedom of American women to the discretion of a Saudi royal. In practice, this permission to leave can be risky to seek and difficult to exercise. Because women aren't allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia, for example, it took Ms. Saga a few weeks even to get herself and her kids to the Jeddah consulate.

The most egregious of these obstacles is that while the Saudis may let an American woman leave, they insist on keeping her children. That's an effective form of blackmail, since few mothers will leave their children behind. The only reason Ms. Saga left is that she feared she would be killed if she remained in Saudi Arabia.

Last week Ms. Harty told the House that State welcomes tools that would allow it to use visas to pressure the Saudis. State should then have no objection to inserting into the State appropriations bill, say, a punitive cap on the total number of visas for Saudis. We suspect that only when the Saudis find their own access to America restricted will Americans now forced to make a run for the embassy find themselves truly free to leave.