{"id":68870,"date":"2016-01-18T12:00:27","date_gmt":"2016-01-18T12:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=68870"},"modified":"2016-01-18T11:01:02","modified_gmt":"2016-01-18T11:01:02","slug":"regrettable-is-as-far-as-uk-criticism-of-saudi-arabia-is-allowed-to-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/01\/regrettable-is-as-far-as-uk-criticism-of-saudi-arabia-is-allowed-to-go\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Regrettable\u2019 Is As Far As UK Criticism of Saudi Arabia Is Allowed to Go"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Robert<\/a>10 Jan 2016 – <\/em>Only six of our British military chaps, it seems, are helping the Sunni Saudis kill Shia Yemenis. And they\u2019re not actually in Yemen, merely helping to choose the targets \u2013 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 \u201cterrorist\u201d nests for destruction, you understand. They\u2019re just helping their Saudi mates \u2013 in the words of our Ministry of Defence \u2013 \u201ccomply to the rules of war\u201d.<\/p>\n

Saudi \u201crules\u201d, of course, are not necessarily the same as \u201cour\u201d rules \u2013 although our drone-executions of UK citizens leave a lot of elbow-room for our British warriors in Riyadh. But I couldn\u2019t help chuckling when I read the condemnation of David Mephan, the Human Rights Watch director. Yes, he told us that the Saudis \u201care committing multiple violations of the laws of war in Yemen\u201d, and that the British \u201care 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\u201d. Spot on. But then he added that he thought all this \u201cdeeply regrettable and unacceptable\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cRegrettable\u201d and \u201cunacceptable\u201d represent the double standards we employ when our wealthy Saudi friends put their hands to bloody work. To find something \u201cregrettable\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

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 \u201ccoalition against terror\u201d. Sorting this logistics mess out for the Saudis does, I suppose, make it less \u201cunacceptable\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

\"David<\/a>

David Cameron greets King Salman in Riyadh Rex Features<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/em>Those very words \u2013 regrettable and unacceptable \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

And exactly the same semantics were trotted out last week when the Tory MP and member of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, Daniel Kawczynski \u2013 who was also chairman of the all-party UK parliamentary group on Saudi Arabia \u2013 was questioned on television about the 47 executions in Saudi Arabia, the kingdom\u2019s misogynistic policies and its harsh anti-gay laws. Faced with the unspeakable \u2013 indeed, the outrageous \u2013 acts of a regime which shares its Wahhabi Sunni traditions with Isis and the Taliban, Kawczynski replied that the executions were \u201cvery regrettable\u201d, that targeting civilians would be \u201ccompletely unacceptable\u201d and the anti-gay laws \u201chighly reprehensible\u201d. \u201cReprehensible\u201d, I suppose, is a bit stronger than regrettable.<\/p>\n

It was instructive, also, to hear Kawczynski refer to executions as \u201ccertain domestic actions\u201d, as if slicing heads off human beings was something to be kept within the family \u2013 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\u2019s man in Washington, spoke of his country\u2019s religion as part of a \u201ctimeless culture\u201d whose people lived according to Islam \u201cand our other basic ways\u201d. A former British ambassador to Riyadh, Sir Alan Munro, once advised Westerners to \u201cadapt\u201d in Saudi Arabia and \u201cto act with the grain of Saudi traditions and culture\u201d. This \u201cgrain\u201d can be found, of course, in Amnesty\u2019s archives of men \u2013 and occasionally women \u2013 who are beheaded each year, often after torture and grotesquely unfair trials.<\/p>\n

Another former ambassador, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles \u2013 or \u201cAbu Henry\u201d as he was affectionately called by his Saudi friends \u2013 used arguments back in 2006 that might have come from David Cameron today. \u201cI\u2019ve been hugely impressed by the way in which the Saudi Arabian authorities have tackled and contained what was a serious terrorist threat,\u201d he said then. \u201cThey\u2019ve shrunk the pool of support for terrorism.\u201d Which is exactly how our Prime Minister justified his support for Saudi Arabia\u2019s place on the UN Human Rights Council last October. \u201cIt\u2019s because we receive from them important intelligence and security information that keeps us safe,\u201d he told Channel 4\u2019s Jon Snow.<\/p>\n

But wasn\u2019t there, nine years ago, a small matter of the alleged bribery of Saudi officials by the British BAE Systems arms group? The Financial Times<\/em> revealed how Robert Wardle, the UK director of the Serious Fraud Office, decided he might have to cancel his official investigation after being told \u201chow the probe might cause Riyadh to cancel security and intelligence co-operation\u201d. The advice to Wardle was that persisting with his official enquiry might \u201cendanger lives in Britain\u201d. Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara ordered the investigation closed.<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 yet it would be interesting to know if the Saudis are using any of the company\u2019s technology in the bombing of civilian targets in Yemen.<\/p>\n

But relax \u2013 this would elicit no expressions of outrage, condemnation or disgust at Saudi Arabia \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

__________________________________<\/p>\n

Robert Fisk, based in Beirut, is a multiple award-winning journalist on the Middle East and a <\/em>correspondent for <\/em>The Independent, a UK newspaper.\u00a0 He is the author of many books on the region, including <\/em>The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 independent.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was instructive, also, to hear Kawczynski refer to executions as \u201ccertain domestic actions\u201d, as if slicing heads off human beings was something to be kept within the family \u2013 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68870\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}