The Hajj tragedy and the authorities

Based on what I observed and experienced in 2002, I strongly believe that the authorities are mostly responsible for the violent death and unusual sickness of pilgrims at the hajj sites for many reasons. By this I do not mean that the individual pilgrims have no responsibilities to take care of themselves and their fellows.

First, the authorities have little or no control over the "infiltration" of a humongous number of unauthorised Saudi citizens and residents who perform hajj almost every year. During the hajj in 2002, I met several Saudi citizens/residents who said they didn't miss performing the hajj over the past 10 to 17 years.

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Second, the authorities have a nominal crowd control arrangement at the jamarat or devil-stoning site. In 2002, I saw a few policemen were announcing instructions over loudspeakers that we could not hear at all in the crowd. Following a stampede in which dozens of pilgrims died the first day of stone throwing, the Saudi police formed a human chain allowing trickles of people into the jamarat site. After that, I believe, few people died in stampede.

Third, as I saw in 2002, there were no special passage-ways for the emergency vehicles to rush in or out of the jamarat site. If people felt sick or became struck in a stampede, they could expect help only from God. Emergency vehicles could not rush to the site because all streets leading to the site are overcrowded by pilgrims. I believe that situation hasn't changed still today.

In fact, I didn't see any reserved lanes or tracks for the movement of emergency vehicles along several roads linking Makkah and the other hajj sites [Mina, Arafat and Muzdalifah]. When thousands of buses started moving from one site to another, they clogged the roads in a few minutes and filled the air with smokes. It took us about six hours to move only several kilometers from Mina to Arafat, where we were to spend the whole day praying. At Arafat, I witnessed an awful scene. The buses haphazardly jammed the roads, and it was extremely hard for people to walk to their tents. By the time we crisscrossed the buses and reached our tent, more than half the day had passed. Moving from Arafat to Muzdalifah at the end of the day, however, was fairly easy for us, but I am not sure how it was like for others.

Another day, it took me and a friend about five hours to travel by car some seven or eight kilometers from Makkah to Mina. After spending three and half hours on the way to Mina, we tried to walk but found it extremely difficult because there was little room along the road to walk. Then, our rented minivan took a detour to Muzdalifah, where again it came to a complete stop behind heavy smoke-exhausting buses. Finally, my friend and I walked from Muzdalifah to Mina.

On the way, we found several ambulances on call, but they could barely inch forward in the traffic jam. One ambulance driver desperately tried to cross the island in the middle of the road but got stuck. As my friend looked on, I joined a number of people who lifted the ambulance on to the other side of the road, allowing it to go against a light moving traffic.

At the Ka'aba, too, it was go-as-you-please chaos, and there was no crowd control or direction for pilgrims to move in an orderly fashion. Some people entered the Ka'aba and seemed to stay there for ever, causing others to move only with tremendous hardship. Around the Ka'aba, the streets were extremely narrow for the sea of people who came to pray and do tawaf [circling the Ka'aba] at a time. They were filled with shops and hotel buildings with their '19th century' structures and elevators. I felt scared when moving up and down in our hotel elevator, which would not be allowed to operate by any responsible people today.

Earlier, on arrival at the airport, I witnessed another horrible scene. I came with an elite group of pilgrims from United Arab Emirates, where I was a visiting professor at a university for the academic year. While I did not expect any special treatment because my group sponsors were well-connected to the Saudi hajj managers, I was surprised to see that we had to wait about six hours in the room where we disembarked from the plane and three more hours outside in the camp before being allowed to move on to Medina. The toilets adjacent to the waiting room were broken and dirty as if they were never cleaned over the past year or so. The conditions of the toilets outside in the towering tents were the same.

At the check-in counters, only three uniformed men were typing in passport records of about a thousand people, one at a time. They had no scanning devices attached to their computers. The security officials were lining us up, allowing two or three people to come out at a time, while my co-travelers were becoming impatient, pushing hard in the lines from behind. On the way out of the waiting room, 11 different security officials checked my passport, one after another, making me feel like a criminal when coming for the blessed journey of a lifetime.

This is just a snapshot of the horrible experience the pilgrims go through while performing the hajj. They accept all hardships out of their deep faith in Allah, as part of the experience of the hajj.

I wonder if the authorities care at all or take advantage of the pious endurance of the pilgrims. They definitely benefit from the billions of dollars the pilgrims pump into their economy every year, but haven't perhaps done enough to see to the pilgrims' welfare. Yes, they have done a lot, but compared to the technology and know-how that is available today, their current management style is apathetic at best.

About 10 years ago, a prominent American Muslim had an experience of the hajj similar to what I described above. He then wrote to the Saudi government and the Saudi ambassador in Washington, D.C., suggesting that they install a subway system connecting the hajj sites, expand the precincts of the Ka'aba, and train their security workers in manners.

The subway system coupled with controlled entry limits for the internal Saudi pilgrims would solve the problem of hajj traffic. In 2002, I asked some Saudis about why they didn't have the kind of trains that provide fast mass transportations in European or American cities and airports. They said they did not have the answer to my question but speculated the reason that made sense to me -- that a subway system would put the bus services owned by the elite out of business.

It befuddles my mind that the Saudi elite are keen on rescuing ailing European and American companies with their fortunes, but they would block an infrastructure development that would benefit Muslims who perform the hajj and the umrah [rites of visit at the Ka'aba any time during the year]. They could still make money by investing in a project for expanding the precincts of the Ka'aba and building underground railways connecting the hajj sites.

All it needs on the part of the authorities is to understand and act on the premise that Muslims come from all corners of the world to spend the savings of their lifetime, and they deserve better treatment.

Mohammad A Auwal is an associate professor in the Department of Communication Studies at California State University, Los Angeles.