In 1979, nine months after Iran's Islamic revolution put a Shiite theocracy in power in that country across the Persian Gulf, an uprising here resulted in the death of 40 people and gave rise to several now-defunct Shiite militant groups. Bombings at Aramco facilities through the 1980s, attributed to Shiites, led to a policy that has cut the percentage of Shiites in the company workforce by half.
"People hurt when they see the milk from the cow flowing to the center and the west, with only a little staying here," said Tayseer Khunaizi, a professor of finance at King Fahad University of Petroleum and Minerals in Dhahran. "Without the conquest of this region, the kingdom of bin Saud would never have survived. But deep inside of us, this is considered an occupation."
The minarets of a huge government-funded Sunni mosque loom over the old center of Qatif. A nearby Shiite mosque is a jumble of tin, wood and masonry.
(Photos Scott Wilson -- The Washington Post)
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Saudi officials acknowledge that the Shiites, whom they rarely mention unless asked, are registering in higher numbers than voters in Riyadh did because they have more specific reasons to vote. Prince Mansour bin Mutaab bin Abdulaziz, a grandson of the founding king who was responsible for setting up the municipal elections, said, "In any society, the minorities are motivated."
"I don't like to use the words majority and minority," said the prince, a professor of public administration at King Saud University. "But I think minorities are more consolidated to have their opinions expressed through the vote."
Most of the neighborhoods in this city of 700,000 are tight and squalid, crisscrossed by dirt roads. Schools occupy apartment buildings, the result of government restrictions on school construction in Shiite neighborhoods. The community raised money for its own hospital, whose concrete walls are crumbling in places into small piles of rubble. The vegetable market shares space with a gas station.
Just outside town, where the concrete houses give way to shriveling groves of date palms, thick pipelines run like rails across the desert. The Ras Tanura refinery lies low on the hazy horizon, white storage tanks appearing like stones. Water wells have nearly run dry because, for years, groundwater has been pumped into depleted oil fields to stabilize them.
Mohammad Hassan, who works on a construction crew for the Saudi Telecommunications Co., recently peered into a well where several men were attempting to start a pump. Only a few feet of water stood at the bottom, cloudy and still. Hassan said his boss is Sunni, like every boss he has ever had. He wants the elections to bring him a chance to rise in the company or secure another job, as well as provide better civic services.
"We don't even have a real vegetable market," said Hassan, 40, a father of six. "I want my voice to carry to the government."
