Wednesday, May 13, 2015
Obama’s Gulf Meeting Protocol:
Shake Hands, Smile, Ignore Repression, Repeat
Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef (L) seen here
with his uncle King Salman (R) in Riyadh, January 27, 2015. King Salman has
designated Prince Mohammed to attend this week's GCC summit at Camp David.
(Photo: REUTERS/Jim Bourg)
Washington DC is presently the converging point for some of the
world’s most oppressive regimes. On May 13th and 14th, President Obama is
hosting a billionaire conglomerate known as the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC),
which consists of the Middle Eastern countries of Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi
Arabia, Qatar, UAE and Oman. The cozy US-GCC relationship exemplifies the
twisted nature of US foreign policy, especially in regards to one particular
monarchy: Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia has been accused of human rights
violations against its own citizens, including political activists,
journalists, and women. The Saudi king has decided to skip the GCC
summit, leaving the ministers of the interior and defense to take
his place, because he opposes the US efforts to reach a diplomatic solution to
the nuclear program of its rival, Iran.
The Saudi monarchy has been using its military and financial
might to impose its will throughout the Middle East. It is financially
bolstering the repressive regime of Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in
Egypt, who came to power in a coup. Saudi tanks brutally crushed Shiite
protests in Bahrain. Years after the first invasion, Saudi forces continue to
dominate Bahrain. The Saudi devotion to Wahhabism, a radical sect of Islam, has
been responsible in exporting extremism around the globe, including 15 of the
19 9/11 hijackers.
The latest Saudi offense is the bombing of Yemen, where the
death toll has reached the thousands. In late March, Saudi military forces
intervened in an internal conflict in Yemen to oppose the rebel Houthi group,
internationalizing what was an internal struggle. The Saudi king defended the
air strikes in Yemen as a way to “save Yemen and
its brotherly people from a group entrenched with the spirit of
sectarianism,” in reference to the Houthis. In the process of claiming to save
Yemen, close to 1,400 people
have died, including hundreds of children. Humanitarian groups have
been calling for a ceasefire repeatedly since March, with no avail until early
May. If salvation was the goal, the Saudis have failed miserably. The latest
development in this ongoing saga has been the Houthi’s compliance with a
five-day ceasefire, beginning at 11:00pm on Tuesday May 12th. In preparation
for this ceasefire, Saudi forces terrorized the Yemeni border with an onslaught
of air strikes in an attempt to “inflict as much
damage as possible” before the mandatory arms rest.
To put things in perspective, the Saudis significantly
heightened the harm and destruction in a struggle that has killed thousands of
civilians, just two days before meeting with US officials to discuss safety and
security in the region. The irony is glaring.
You don’t have to go beyond Saudi’s border to see its abuses.
Organizations such as Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch have condemned the imprisonment
of many political and human rights activists convicted for expressing dissent
against the government, as well as the limited rights provided to women. In
January, Saudi Arabia received worldwide condemnation for sentencing a
political blogger to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes in public. Raif Badawi, husband and
father of three, did nothing more than utilize his freedom of expression, a
crime that is apparently punishable by a medieval form of torture. While the
Saudi ambassador attended free speech rallies in Paris after the Charlie Hebdo
attacks, Badawi was subjected to his second round of lashings. Hundreds of
political prisoners remain jailed, including Badawi’s lawyer Waleed Abulkhair,
who was sentenced to 15 years in prison for his role as a reform activist.
Women have also become the targets of political repression, as driving is still
viewed as a criminal offense. Legally, women are not permitted to be in public
without adhering to a strict dress code that requires head covering. They are
required to have a male guardian at all times, whether it be their brother,
father, or husband, and must ask permission to travel freely.
One could rattle off a plethora of Saudi abuses, yet the biggest
question remains: Why does the US, the alleged beacon of liberty and freedom,
maintain such close ties with such an oppressive regime? More than anything
else, US-Saudi relations and the Summit are the materialization of a business
agreement that turns a blind eye to the basic human rights of Saudi citizens in
favor of lucrative political and military alliances. The US-GCC Summit forces
us to call into question the priorities of United States foreign policy. The
extensive Saudi human rights abuses and its ongoing bombing campaign in Yemen
juxtaposed with a diplomatic meeting to promote the US-Saudi relationship
further exposes the flaws in the system. It’s a system that condemned the ban
on women driving in Saudi Arabia, but lauded the leadership of the deceased
Saudi king. It’s a system that cites human rights abuses in Iran and North
Korea as reasons why normalization is not possible, but provided Saudi Arabia
with $90 billion
worth of weapons contracts in four years, many of which are being
used against civilians in Yemen. Ultimately, it’s a system that remains silent
amidst human rights horrors and air strike terrors, all to preserve a delicate
partnership that fills US corporate bank accounts and arms Saudi monarchs.
The pattern is predictable: ignore the oppression, discuss more
pressing issues of security in the Middle East, shake hands, smile, repeat. If
only the US government chose to be on the side of Raif Badawi, Yemeni
civilians, and the repressed citizens of Saudi Arabia, then the US-GCC goals of
enhanced partnership and security would be more than just empty words.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share
Alike 3.0 License
Nalini Ramachandran is a student at Northeastern University
studying International Affairs and Middle East Studies. She’s currently working
in the CODEPINK Washington, DC office.
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their lives."
Eugene Victor Debs
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