As it happened: Saudi women get behind wheel as ban lifts

It was an emotional moment for one female driver who took CNN on a journey to her father’s house in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Though she had previously driven in California, her father had never seen her behind the wheel of a car before.

“I’m so happy, there’s no words can explain what I’m feeling right now,” she told CNN has she drove in the darkness to her father’s house in Jeddah.

“I’m just too proud to be doing this right now,” she added.

Since he was elevated to second in line to the Saudi throne a year ago, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has shaken things up in the ultra-conservative kingdom.

He is allowing women to drive and letting them go to sports stadiums, allowing music to be played on streets, permitting outdoor performances and, perhaps very significantly, marginalizing the kingdom’s religious police. And Saudis are no longer forced to go to prayer five times a day.

Critics say the changes are merely cosmetic, and note that the government has arrested a number of women in recent weeks who have demanded further reforms.

But the atmosphere does seem more relaxed now than there was a year ago. One Saudi man told CNN that he is no longer to made to feel guilty, like he is being a “bad” Muslim.

Read more from CNN Diplomatic Editor Nic Robertson here.

Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (or MBS as he's known) agreed to lift the driving ban

For some women, the jubilation at realizing a hard-won freedom Sunday will be tempered by the arrests last month of a number of Saudi rights activists, including some who have played a prominent role in the fight for women’s right to drive.

Among the women’s rights advocates arrested last month were Loujain Al-Hathloul, who was previously detained for 73 days in 2014 after trying to drive from the United Arab Emirates to Saudi Arabia, and Aziza al-Yousef, 70, one of the country’s earliest activists for the right to drive.

Both remain in custody, rights group Amnesty International said Thursday.

Read more here

Saudi campaigner, Aziza al-Yousef, pictured in Riyadh, 2016

Women might be legally driving for the first time on Sunday – but that doesn’t mean a woman has never been issued a ticket before.

Manal al-Sharif, who has campaigned heavily for female driving, was issued a ticket after recording herself getting behind the wheel in 2011.

She uploaded the video of herself driving – seemingly unnoticed – through the streets of Saudi Arabia’s Khobar City, and was subsequently jailed for nine days.?

On Sunday, the activist was quick to draw attention to the past violation in a Twitter post.?

“The history of Saudi Arabia, since its founding, has been one where the government has been gradually loosening the strings of tremendous conservatism,” according to Ali Shihabi, founder of The Arabia Foundation.

Here’s the long road the country took to get to this point.

Women’s parking spaces – replete with pink bollards and signage – were all set for the new drivers.?

At the stroke of midnight Sunday, Saudi women were legally allowed to drive for the first time – and they wasted no time getting behind the wheel. Here are some photos from Khobar city and Riyadh.

A Saudi women and her friends celebrate her first time driving in Khobar city, in the east of the country, on her way to Bahrain.

More celebrations in Khobar city

Saudi woman Sabika Habib drives through the streets of Khobar city

Walaa Abou Najem, 30, drives her car through the streets of the capital Riyadh for the first time

One of the kingdom’s most recognizable royals, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, praised the end of the ban early Sunday, as his daughter Reem Alwaleed got behind the wheel to drive her father and her children through the streets of Riyadh.

Alwaleed, a grandson of Saudi Arabia’s founder, King Abdulaziz Al Saud, built his investment firm into a global powerhouse. His personal fortune is estimated at more than $17 billion.

He was arrested last year as part of a so-called “anti-corruption” sweep by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and detained for several months at the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton, along with hundreds of other members of Saudi’s business elite, including more than a dozen princes and other top officials. He was released in January.

Before Saudi women could take the roads for the first time, they practiced their driving in go-karts or simulators at special events held across the country.

Across the street from the dancing neon lights of Jeddah’s Red Sea Mall, women like 22-year-old Rawan Ahmed got behind the wheels at a go-kart track.

The young woman was instructed to tuck in her head scarf before putting on the helmet.

Ahmed told CNN she was a bit concerned about driving on the highways. Not afraid, just cautious, she added.

“Ninety percent (of people) accept women driving,” she said. “They chose the right time to allow women to drive. I feel this is the most appropriate time.”

Rawan Ahmed at the go-kart track

Not everyone is pleased with the new laws, as CNN’s Sarah El Sirgany discovered in Jeddah.

“Women can’t drive and they are unqualified,” said Khaled Abdullah Al-Houba, a 42-year-old state employee.

“The society is not used to women driving,” he added.

Al-Houba was sitting with his family at a busy walkway overlooking the Red Sea in Jeddah, nibbling on snacks and hail-flavored Arabic coffee. Next to him, his daughters were sipping on a blue syrup staining their lips.

For Al-Houba, the decision to lift the ban, announced last September, was implemented too soon. “Women need at least two years to learn driving,” he said, adding “so the women can be ready and society gets ready.”

He said he would consider allowing his daughters to apply for a license in the future, but for now he believes that “Saudi women still don’t have the guts needed to drive.”

Khaled Abdullah Al-Houba with his family?

This Nov. 30, 2014 image was taken from a video released by Loujain al-Hathloul.

The first demonstrations for women’s right to drive in Saudi Arabia began after the Gulf War. Female American soldiers, deployed to the kingdom during Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, were driving through military bases, exciting the imaginations of Saudi women.

In November 1990, 47 Saudi women drove through the streets of Riyadh in a motorcade protest. They were all arrested, and the country’s highest religious body issued an edict banning female driving, adding what was a customary ban to the legal code.

The decades that followed the Riyadh protest were peppered with movements to lift the ban, but they really came to a head around the time of the Arab Spring in 2011. A social-media campaign called Women2Drive culminated in Manal al-Sharif’s drive in Khobar. Some years later, other activists emerged at the forefront of the movement, including Loujain al-Hathloul (pictured above in 2014) who was detained for 73 days in 2014 after trying to drive from the United Arab Emirates to Saudi Arabia

Read more here.

Dr. Mona Al-Fares was in her car before midnight, waiting for the ban to lift before setting off through the streets of Jeddah with her husband and children.

“I feel like I’m surprised – am I really driving in my own country? I feel happy, relieved, I feel like I’m free.”

Women still are beholden to?restrictive guardianship laws?that govern nearly every aspect of their lives, despite recent moves to ease them. In cases where a woman’s father is deceased or absent, her husband, a male relative, brother,?or in some cases, even a son, must give his approval before a woman can obtain often basic entitlements.

Saudi women still cannot mix freely with members of the opposite sex.?Some exceptions include?hospitals, banks and medical colleges. They also cannot appear in public without wearing a full-length black abaya, a loose robe meant to?protect women’s modesty in public.

Rights group Amnesty International on Thursday welcomed the lifting of the driving ban as “a long-overdue small step in the right direction” but said it “must now be followed by?reforms to end a whole range of discriminatory laws?and practices,” including an end to the guardianship system.

Read more here.

As the ban lifted at midnight Sunday, women who had already obtained licenses got behind the wheel in cities across Saudi Arabia.

One of them was businesswoman Hind Alzahid. “It’s our moment”, she told Arab News.