Tue Nov 26, 2013 7:4AM GMT
By Finian Cunningham
As Saudi-sponsored extremism in the Middle East becomes ever more reckless, it is rebounding with damaging public relations blowback for the kingdom’s Western backers.
A British parliamentary report last week noted that the London government has “a credibility problem” because of its long-standing political and commercial alliance with Saudi Arabia.
This “credibility problem,” as the British lawmakers put it delicately, stems from Britain’s carefully contrived “democratic” image being tarnished because of its Saudi client.
Typically, the British skirt around the issues, but the rest of the world is increasingly realizing that it is the Saudis who are funding and arming mercenary gangs that are slitting the throats of Christians and Muslims in Syria, and carrying out suicide bombings against innocent civilians, from Lebanon to Iraq to Pakistan.
The study by the UK parliamentary foreign affairs committee acknowledged that the oil-rich kingdom has “a notorious human rights record.” And, risibly, it called for monitoring of Saudi-supplied weapons to militants in Syria and other extremists elsewhere.
However, a closer reading of the report shows that the British lawmakers are cynically less concerned by actual Saudi-sponsored extremism and violations, and more concerned by the damage it is causing to the international image of Britain from being associated with the Saudis.
As the British parliamentary committee states: “Democratic governments such as the UK face a challenge in trying to reconcile their liberal constituencies at home with the need to maintain relationships with undemocratic and conservative regimes that are important to their interests on a regional and global level.”
In other words, the British government is squirming from “trying to reconcile” its bogus rhetoric on democracy and human rights while it is backing to the hilt the despotic dictatorship in Saudi Arabia.
Officially, Britain claims that it is supporting “reforms” in Saudi Arabia and the other Persian Gulf dictatorship in Bahrain.
But this ever-so British conceit is being increasingly exposed as a barefaced lie as the House of Saud steps up its covert terror campaigns across the Middle East, including the regime’s merciless crackdown on pro-democracy movements in Bahrain and within Saudi Arabia itself.
The British parliamentary report quaintly calls for the UK government “to assess” the supply of weapons from Saudi Arabia into Syria. This faux naiveté is contemptible and is fooling no one. It is already established fact that Saudi Arabia has been funding and arming extremist mercenary groups, such as the al-Qaeda outfit known as Al Nusra, with hundreds of millions of dollars. Indeed, these Wahhabi terror networks, which are killing dozens of civilians daily in Syria and Iraq, have been set up by senior figures in the House of Saud, including the kingdom’s intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan.
The deadly blast last week at the Iranian embassy in the Lebanese capital Beirut, killing more than 23, is credibly attributed to Saudi sponsorship. Several other bombings, rocket attacks and assassinations in Beirut and elsewhere in Lebanon over the past year are also suspected of being authored by Saudi intelligence.
Saudi Arabia, as well as Israel, stands to gain from the wave of terrorism hitting the region, as that violence foments sectarianism and fragments popular democratic movements. The Saudi and Zionist regimes, based on despotism and divisiveness, have most to lose if peace and democracy were to flourish in the region.
This terror agenda, which is also aimed at undermining Iran’s positive influence in the region, appears to have escalated in recent months as Washington and London have belatedly given their support to diplomacy over militarism towards Syria and Iran.
This loose-cannon behavior by the Saudis is causing Britain much discomfort in particular. It is putting a very awkward spotlight on why Britain is so closely allied to such a despotic terror state.
The answer to that increasingly apparent anomaly is simply the squalid detail of money. This is largely because of lucrative Saudi investment in Britain and the massive purchase of British-made weapons. Saudi investment in Britain is reckoned at $100 billion - the top European country destination for Saudi capital.
Britain is also trying to finalize a strategic weapons deal with Saudi Arabia for 72 Typhoon fighter jets built by British Aerospace. The contract was first signed in 2007 and is worth $7 billion but its completion has been dogged by wrangling over costs.
Moreover, the Saudi purchase is crucial for additional British sales of the Typhoon to Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates - worth another $7 billion. If the Saudi contract falls through that will most likely scupper the other Persian Gulf buyers. Given the clapped-out state of Britain’s industrial economy and the strategic importance of British Aerospace as one of the few remaining British-flagship manufacturing companies that would be a devastating blow.
The recent announcement of thousands of job losses at BAE due to declining global sales underlines the high stakes.
This all presents a painful conundrum for British rulers. Britain’s public image as a champion of democratic values is seen, by them, as an asset for doing business around the world.
But this image is being seriously eroded, if not exposed as fraudulent, because of Britain’s association with the despotic terror state of Saudi Arabia. And Saudi rulers are straining this contradiction to breaking point by their increasing involvement in extremism and terrorism across the Middle East.
That makes the trouble for Britain deeply problematic. The British cannot rein in the Saudis because of dependence on Saudi money. Any caution to the Saudis, even for cynical reasons of public relations, could jeopardize that money. No wonder British lawmakers are worried about “a credibility problem.”
FC/HN