An explosion and smoke rise after an airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition at a weapons depot in Sanaa on September 11, 2015. (photo: Hani Mohammed/AP)
The
Saudi Rules
By Robert Fisk, CounterPunch
13 January 16
Only
six of our British military chaps, it seems, are helping the Sunni Saudis kill
Shia Yemenis. And they’re not actually in Yemen, merely helping to choose the
targets – which have so far included hospitals, markets, a wedding party and a
site opposite the Iranian embassy. Not that our boys and girls selected those
particular “terrorist” nests for destruction, you understand. They’re just
helping their Saudi mates – in the words of our Ministry of Defence – “comply
to the rules of war”.
Saudi
“rules”, of course, are not necessarily the same as “our” rules – although our
drone-executions of UK citizens leave a lot of elbow-room for our British
warriors in Riyadh. But I couldn’t help chuckling when I read the condemnation
of David Mephan, the Human Rights Watch director. Yes, he told us that the Saudis
“are committing multiple violations of the laws of war in Yemen”, and that the
British “are working hand in glove with the Saudis, helping them, enhancing
their capacity to prosecute this war that has led to the death of so many
civilians”. Spot on. But then he added that he thought all this “deeply
regrettable and unacceptable”.
“Regrettable”
and “unacceptable” represent the double standards we employ when our wealthy
Saudi friends put their hands to bloody work. To find something “regrettable”
means it causes us sadness. It disappoints us. The implication is that the good
old Saudis have let us down, fallen from their previously high moral
principles.
No
wonder the Minister of Defense has popped across to Riyadh to un-crease the
maps and explain those incomprehensible co-ordinates for the Saudi leaders of
the “coalition against terror”. Sorting this logistics mess out for the Saudis
does, I suppose, make it less “unacceptable” to have our personnel standing
alongside the folk who kill women for adultery without even a fair trial and
who chop off the heads of dozens of opponents, including a prominent Saudi Shia
cleric.
Those
very words – regrettable and unacceptable – are now the peak of the critical
lexicon which we are permitted to use about the Saudis. Anything stronger would
force us to ask why David Cameron lowered our flag when the last king of this
weird autocracy died.
And
exactly the same semantics were trotted out last week when the Tory MP and
member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, Daniel Kawczynski – who was
also chairman of the all-party UK parliamentary group on Saudi Arabia – was
questioned on television about the 47 executions in Saudi Arabia, the kingdom’s
misogynistic policies and its harsh anti-gay laws. Faced with the unspeakable –
indeed, the outrageous – acts of a regime which shares its Wahhabi Sunni
traditions with Isis and the Taliban, Kawczynski replied that the executions
were “very regrettable”, that targeting civilians would be “completely
unacceptable” and the anti-gay laws “highly reprehensible”. “Reprehensible”, I
suppose, is a bit stronger than regrettable.
It was
instructive, also, to hear Kawczynski refer to executions as “certain domestic
actions”, as if slicing heads off human beings was something to be kept within
the family – which is true, in a sense, since the Saudi authorities allow their
executioners to train their sons in the craft of head-slicing, just as we Brits
used to allow our hangmen to bring their sons into the gallows trade. This
familial atmosphere was always advertised by its ambassadors and their friends.
Prince Bandar bin Sultan, when he was Saudi Arabia’s man in Washington, spoke
of his country’s religion as part of a “timeless culture” whose people lived
according to Islam “and our other basic ways”. A former British ambassador to
Riyadh, Sir Alan Munro, once advised Westerners to “adapt” in Saudi Arabia and
“to act with the grain of Saudi traditions and culture”. This “grain” can be
found, of course, in Amnesty’s archives of men – and occasionally women – who
are beheaded each year, often after torture and grotesquely unfair trials.
Another
former ambassador, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles – or “Abu Henry” as he was
affectionately called by his Saudi friends – used arguments back in 2006 that
might have come from David Cameron today. “I’ve been hugely impressed by the
way in which the Saudi Arabian authorities have tackled and contained what was
a serious terrorist threat,” he said then. “They’ve shrunk the pool of support
for terrorism.” Which is exactly how our Prime Minister justified his support
for Saudi Arabia’s place on the UN Human Rights Council last October. “It’s
because we receive from them important intelligence and security information
that keeps us safe,” he told Channel 4’s Jon Snow.
But
wasn’t there, nine years ago, a small matter of the alleged bribery of Saudi
officials by the British BAE Systems arms group? The Financial Times revealed
how Robert Wardle, the UK director of the Serious Fraud Office, decided he
might have to cancel his official investigation after being told “how the probe
might cause Riyadh to cancel security and intelligence co-operation”. The
advice to Wardle was that persisting with his official enquiry might “endanger
lives in Britain”. Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara ordered the investigation closed.
The
advice to Wardle, I should add, came from none other than Sherard Cowper-Coles,
who later became UK ambassador to Afghanistan and, on retirement from the
Foreign Office, worked for a short time as a business development director for
BAE Systems. Our former man in Riyadh now has no connection with BAE – yet it
would be interesting to know if the Saudis are using any of the company’s
technology in the bombing of civilian targets in Yemen.
But
relax – this would elicit no expressions of outrage, condemnation or disgust at
Saudi Arabia – nor any of the revulsion we show when other local head-choppers
take out their swords. Any such UK involvement would be unacceptable. Even
regrettable. We would be sad. Disappointed. Say no more.
C 2015 Reader Supported News
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"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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