The
controversial visit to Britain
by the Saudi monarch highlighted the need for a more equitable alternative to
the client state model.
November 2007
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia’s official state
visit to Britain last week stirred up a lot of public debate regarding the propriety of feting the absolute monarch of one of the
world's most repressive regimes, given the kingdom’s dire human rights record and the exporting of its
puritanical, iconoclastic and fiery Wahhabi version of Islam.
Although I agree that the Saudi regime ought to
be more isolated internationally than it is, we must be careful not to express selective
outrage. By the same token, should the queen refuse to greet George Bush
because of the catastrophe he has unleashed on Iraq? Should the
leaders of the countries who were opposed to the invasion of Iraq also
refuse to meet Gordon Brown or before him Tony Blair? What about all
those murky Anglo-American arms deals used to soak up those petrodollars?
A more profound reason is that Britain has
played a pivotal role, over almost a century, in creating and arming the Saudi
ogre it is now beginning to fear, and without a major Anglo-American policy
shift, potential disaster looms around the corner.
Most people have heard of the larger-than-life
exploits of the self-promoting Thomas Edward “Lawrence of Arabia” and his role in recruiting the Sharif of Mecca to rebel against Ottoman rule,
rewarding his sons with thrones in Jordan
and Iraq.
A more obscure British agent who went by the more literary name William Shakespear forged a similar deal with the most
conservative clan leader in Arabia, Abdel-AzizIbnSaud, the founder of modern Saudi
Arabia, and his newfound kingdom became a
British protectorate.
When abundant oil reserves were discovered in Saudi Arabia in
1938, its client status was sealed. In return for keeping supplies of cheap oil
flowing, the British and Americans turned a blind eye to internal oppression
and the messianic nature of the Saudi version of Islam. In fact, in the 1950s
and 1960s, the export of Wahhabism was seen as a
‘moderating’ counterbalance against the more independence-seeking pan-Arabist movement.
But the short-sighted nature of the indirect
rule exercised over oil-rich Middle Eastern states through the client state
model has served to deliver one disaster after another. It is essentially a
system in which even moderate independence is not tolerated, which has led to
the gradual radicalisation of the political landscape in Iraq, Iran,
and festering under the surface, in Saudi Arabia.
It is exactly four years since President Bush
launched a so-called new policy, “a forward strategy for freedom in the Middle East”. He observed that: “Sixty years of western nations excusing
and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East
did nothing to make us safe – because in the long term stability cannot be
purchased at the expense of liberty.”
Despite Bush’s noble words, little has changed
in the fundamental pattern of relations established by the British during the first world war, except for the fact that it has become more
overtly militaristic since Bush came to office, as the proxy warfare favoured
during the Cold War gave way to direct military engagement.
The basic pillars of this model, of which Saudi
Arabia is a prime example, is that client regimes are invariably right, no
matter what mischief they get up to at home or abroad, as long as it does not
threaten the immediate economic interests of the west. Meanwhile, regimes which
try to steer a more independent course are always wrong, no matter how much
they respond to the will of their people and how much their presence may
actually be beneficial for long-term global stability – Iran’s Mohammad Mossadeq is a classic example of this.
For the past century or so, the
chasm between lofty rhetoric and reality has been a gaping one, as are the
refusal to learn lessons from earlier disastrous interventions. British
Major-General Stanley Maud proclaimed upon entering the Iraqi capital in 1917:
“People of Baghdad, remember for 26 generations you have suffered under strange
tyrants. Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or
enemies, but as liberators.”
Then, as now, the Iraqi people refused to be
“liberated” at gunpoint and did not accept the installation of a foreign
monarch to rule over them, even though the British unconvincingly claimed that King Faisal came to power with a 96% referendum
showing. A similar situation took shape across the border in Iran.
This short-sighted policy led to a long and
bloody series of revolts and coups and western-sponsored counter-coups which
ultimately led to the virulently anti-western Iranian Islamic revolution and
the turning of “our friend” Saddam Hussein against his one-time backers and
sponsors.
Although this has not yet happened in Saudi Arabia, largely due to the brutal
oppression of all opposition, some signs of this have already emerged, as the
blowback from the US-backed mujahideen in Afghanistan amply illustrates,
which led to the attacks of 11 September 2001.
This suppression of internal dissent has had
dire consequences in Saudi
Arabia. One of these is the fact that
moderate and more secular opposition has been pretty much eliminated in the
kingdom, leaving extreme Wahhabists with a growing
monopoly on opposition.
As Saudi scholar Nawaf
al-Obeid pointed out in his groundbreaking thesis,
the Taliban of Afghanistan provide “a glimpse into what Saudi Arabia could
become if the traditional balance of power is disrupted in favour of the
religious establishment”, with the added catalyst of petrodollars.
So, what would happen if, as many analysts have
feared for years, the House of Saud was overthrown by
radical Islamists? It is difficult to tell whether life would get worse or
better for your average Saudi given the ultra-conservative nature of the
current regime. But it is likely that any revolutionary regime would be
anti-western, given the decades of corruption western support has fostered in
the kingdom and more hostile towards its Shia'a
neighbours, given Wahhabism’s total rejection of
other versions of Islam.
Judging by the existing track record of the
Anglo-American alliance, no matter what the complexion of the overthrowers – even if they were moderate secularists – any
indigenous regime change in Saudi is unlikely to go down well.
A panic would probably ensue over the threat to
oil supplies and all the western-supplied advanced weaponry that has fallen
into “hostile” hands. Iran, which had also amassed a massive arsenal under the
“friendly” Shah, was disarmed by proxy in Gulf War I, Iraq directly in Gulf
Wars II and III, this future Saudi could be next in line in Gulf War IV or V
(if the current overtures against Iran end in actual blows).
Not only would this be horrific news for the
peoples of the Middle East, the world's most militarised region, but it would
draw America
into the kind of sapping cycle of conflict that brought down the imperial
European powers in the 20th century. There is also the danger that,
with China
also scrambling for a share of the world's dwindling oil supplies, the fragile
global order could be pushed over the edge and we could possibly see the first
world war of the 21st century.
This worst-case scenario, and other less extreme
but undesirable outcomes, can be averted through the abandonment of the
client-state model and by nurturing Anglo-American tolerance of Middle Eastern
peoples’ right to choose. This would empower the emergence of a more moderate
and less-hostile opposition. After all, Arab countries will not stop needing
the technologically advanced west, but a more equal relationship will be to the
long-term good of all concerned.
In a rare moment of clarity, TE Lawrence wrote
in a letter to the Times: “The Arabs rebelled against the Turks during the war
not because the Turk Government [sic] was notably bad but because they wanted
independence.”
