Tuesday, December 15, 2015 

The brilliant PR and distraction techniques of a terrorism sponsoring kleptocracy.

Unless you're one of those members of the general public we talked about yesterday, you won't have missed the wonderful news at the weekend of how a tiny number of Saudi Arabian women were able to vote (and stand for election) for the first time.  They were voting for local councils that have essentially no power whatsoever, the country remaining an absolute monarchy, or better described, a vast kleptocracy, Saudi Arabia literally meaning the entire country belongs to the Sauds, but such things nonetheless remain important.  At least as long as you regard such gestures as retaining meaning; the film Suffragette thought it was notable enough to include in its ending sequence of the year women first gained the vote, so who am I to argue?  It's the principle of the thing, and if say some women who wanted to take part weren't able to as their guardian refused to drive them to the polling station, as suffrage or not, women remain chattel, that can be worried about later.

If nothing else, the Saudis have great PR, and you can bet every foreign desk in the world was informed weeks ago of the approach of this great democratic advancement.  Turnout overall might have been derisory, most of those eligble might have taken part in the boycott, and it might have made Iran's managed democracy and presidential elections where hundreds of candidates are blocked from standing look the very model of free and fair, and yet the headline, that women were able to vote, will be all that matters to the Sauds.

The exact same thinking is behind the launch of a Saudi-led anti-terrorism military coalition of Sunni Muslim states.  Just as much play was made of how the Saudis, Emirate nations and Jordan were taking part in the bombing of Islamic State, sorties that lasted at most a few months before those jets flew off to take part in the other proxy war in the region in Yemen, it's not whether there's any realistic chance of the coalition doing anything whatsoever, it's that it exists.

Some might for instance think it a striking coincidence that last week also saw the Saudis play host to the first ever foreign meeting aimed at bringing the various opposition factions in Syria together, excluding Islamic State and the al-Nusra Front, of course.  Invited was Ahrar al-Sham and other groups in the same Saudi backed alliance that includes the al-Nusra Front, but can you imagine al-Qaida signing up to a declaration that Syria after Assad will be a rainbow nation of every colour and creed, democracy a necessity?  Granted, Ahrar al-Sham did withdraw and only returned when it was explained that their goal of an Islamic state could be achieved via a democracy that would then never be called on again,  but let's not splits hairs, eh?

Also purely coincidental is how this week sees talks between the Houthis and Yemen's nominal president Hadi, talks not being attended by Iran, the Saudis or the Emiratis, the key backers of the respective sides.  The Saudis and their allies have been reducing what was already the Arab world's poorest nation to rubble in a war backed by both the UN and our good selves, without so much as a smidgen of the outrage or opprobrium that has rained down on President Assad.  Like with the backing given to the allies of al-Qaida in Syria, one of the side effects of the conflict has been the advance of al-Qaida in Yemen, aka al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, aka until the rise of Islamic State the jihadist group most feared in the West, and the one linked to the two French nationals who carried out the attack on Charlie Hebdo.

Cynics might be drawn to the conclusion there is some sort of connection between the Saudis making clear just how against terrorism they are while groups they either enable or actively support march on.  As Hayder al-Khoei has tweeted, this joke doesn't need a punchline.  It's too bad we're the joke.

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12/15/2015 11:24:00 pm | | | links to this post

Wednesday, October 28, 2015 

Appeasing the Saudis.

In a way, you can almost understand the apparent consternation of our good friends the Saudis at what they see as the sudden downgrading of our "strong alliance".  Following the decision to cancel a memorandum of understanding on the supply of training to Saudi prison officers, as well as adverse coverage about floggings and beheadings, they just can't be sure where it is they stand.  What's more, as voiced by the Saudi ambassador Mohammed bin Nawaf bin Abdulaziz (crazy name, crazy guy?!), this "alarming change" has come at the same time as the red carpet has been rolled out for our new best pals the Chinese.

This must be all the more confusing because China and the Saudi Arabia, while very different nations, have often shared the same diplomatic strategy.  They affect to be incredibly thin-skinned, to the point where mentioning human rights within 10 miles of their embassies is the equivalent of suggesting their collective mother wasn't just a woman of ill morals, but also inclined towards the farmyard.  David Cameron merely meeting the Dalai Lama, a man deemed a terrorist by Beijing, was enough for relations to be downgraded at a stroke.  When the Commons foreign affairs committee declared it was to hold an inquiry into a couple of Gulf states, including Saudi, the government had to an order a report into the Muslim Brotherhood and its involvement in the UK to placate them.

Xi Jinping being invited round to hobnob with Queenie, Kate and all the rest must then have been all the more bewildering.  China might not be quite as repressive as Saudi, especially for women, nor do the Chinese go in for flogging, but both are liberal when it comes to the use of capital punishment.  If there was any discussion of human rights with Xi, then precisely in what way it was it was addressed and how it was responded to we simply don't know.  Despite the BBC putting the best possible gloss on Xi's answer to the only allowed question from Laura Kuenssberg, his point was fairly clear: everyone had lessons they could learn on human rights.  From China, presumably.

There are nonetheless subtler ways of making clear your displeasure than the way bin Abdulaziz chose.  Rare is it that a supposed diplomat decides to directly channel the Krays, rarer still that a newspaper like the Telegraph would choose to publish the resulting column and present it as though it was anything other an outright attempt to intimidate.  Abdulaziz's message is, as David Allen Green has pointed out, nice country you've got here, would be a shame if anything was to happen to it.  It really is that crass, that tone deaf.  Flogging, public executions, treating women as chattel, all these things are mere local traditions and customs, and just as the Saudis respect our traditions and customs, they expect us to respect theirs.  If our extensive trade links are to be subject to "certain political ideologies", i,e. Jeremy Corbyn daring to suggest we shouldn't be training torturers or the jailers of human rights dissidents, then everything is on the table, including intelligence cooperation.  Why, David Cameron says Saudi intelligence has saved hundreds of lives, or rather according to the ambassador, "thousands".

This is hardly the first time the Saudis have threatened to withdraw intelligence cooperation.  Indeed, it's their rhetorical weapon of choice: just when the Serious Fraud Office was about to break open their probe into corruption in the Al-Yamamah weapon deal, the Saudis informed the British ambassador if the inquiry was not stopped that "British lives on British streets" would be at risk.  The message was that blunt.  To make such a threat over the potential uncovering of precisely what the Saudi royals are so often accused of is one thing; to do the same over a paltry £6m memorandum of understanding, which had not yet so much as been committed to is something else.

Such are the deep links within various government departments to the Saudis, not to mention inside the arms firms which the British state often acts as salesman extraordinaire for, it's all but impossible to know precisely where direct Saudi influence ends and the curious devotion to some of the most unpleasant people on the planet begins.  There is however clearly more than meets the eye to foreign secretary Philip Hammond's unannounced visit to Saudi Arabia than merely to announce that Karl Andree, imprisoned for over a year for the heinous offence of having homemade wine, will be released shortly.  That ever reliable conduit for the intelligence agencies, Frank Gardner, says the visit was meant to "smooth ruffled feathers", and yet it also looks remarkably like being part of an agreed stick and then carrot PR exercise, with the ambassador wielding the stick and Hammond then coming away with a prize regardless.

Perhaps the true reason for the trip is to soothe Saudi nerves over the possibility that we won't be able to carry on supplying planes, bombs and spare parts to their airforce, currently involved in reducing Yemen to rubble as part of the second on-going proxy war between the Sauds and Iran in the region.  Perhaps it was also to reassure them that Iran being invited to the talks over Syria is not about anything other than a extremely belated attempt to reach a peace settlement.  It still though highlights just how deep in the Saudi pocket government ministers are.  Very few other nations could get away with making such blatant threats, in our very own media no less, and not as a result be told where to go.

The truth is we are scared of the Saudis, just as it seems the Americans are also.  Not because they can turn off the oil taps as they once did and could, but at what potentially they could do if we finally called their bluff on their wider role in the region and in the spreading of the Wahhabi creed worldwide.  British lives on British streets, or American lives on American streets, and not merely as a result of stopping the sharing of intelligence.  The threat seems far more implicit than that, a message backed up by how regardless of their protests, it's a fact that the Saudis have been funding jihadist groups in Syria, if not necessarily either Islamic State or the al-Nusra Front.  As David Allan Green again writes, there's a name for our response to this open intimidation: appeasement.  Just don't expect those usually first in line to decry Western "weakness" to be in the vanguard on this occasion.

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10/28/2015 11:31:00 pm | | | links to this post

Tuesday, November 06, 2012 

Bomber Cameron's on tour again.

Last year, while on his previous jaunt around the Middle East selling weapons to autocracies, David Cameron had a sudden attack of the vapours.  There he was, pimping himself out for the country, going to a godforsaken land where his only home comfort was Fruit Ninja, and the journalists who'd travelled with him had the temerity to question whether he should be there at all!  Didn't these people understand even shitty little democracies like Kuwait must have the right to defend themselves?  Granted, it's not clear how they're meant to defend themselves from invading forces with the stuff we mostly sell them, such as riot shields, but that's irrelevant.  This is about supporting British business and British manufacturing, not to forget the rebalancing of the economy away from the state and financial sectors.  Why are all these critics so obtuse?

This time round, the Cameron team's solution to prevent embarrassment was simple: they just didn't invite the media along with them.  After all, who needs the cynical British press around when all they do is whinge and moan about everything?  They also tend to ask uncomfortable questions in front of foreign dignitaries, whether they be objections to the UAE's puritanism which leads to British citizens getting thrown in prison for enjoying themselves too much, or in the case of our dear friends the Saudis, so much as asking them about anything.

They are incredibly easily offended, you see.  A jumped-up committee went so far as to announce a review into our relations with Bahrain and the House of Saud, and in double quick time the ambassador was telling anyone who would listen how "insulting" such an inquiry was.  And as with almost any tyrannical regime (with the possible exception of North Korea, who only the really out there tiny Communist sects will defend) there are a few apologists more than ready to say how terrible it is that the Saudis are so misunderstood.  Take Daniel Kawczynski, who thinks we all have a distorted, negative, prejudicial view of the Kingdom.  Just because it's an absolute monarchy where women are treated as chattel, the "morality" police are all powerful and the royal family is notoriously corrupt doesn't mean it's all bad.  Crime's low, witchcraft is punishable by death and there aren't any alcoholics because there's no alcohol.  A bit different to our crack-addled, poverty-ridden inner cities, eh?

Besides, we need to flog the Eurofighters to someone: at best, they'll eventually end up costing us £23bn; at worst, it'll be £37bn, or almost the equivalent of an entire year's defence budget.  The Saudis have already taken some, and now we're trying to get the UAE to take a few as well.  Although originally intended as a fighter to battle the Soviets, we've since spent even more money making them slightly more useful as an air-to-ground bomber.  This raises the question of what exactly the Saudis and the UAE will end up using them for.  Clearly they'll be a deterrent, but just how likely is a conventional invasion of either nation?  Considering the Saudis have previously shown little inclination towards intervening anywhere other than proxy states such as Bahrain, where a show of force was enough to crush the uprising there, it's dubious in the extreme they're likely to be used in an attack in Iran or elsewhere, except in a reprisal for a pre-emptive strike.

Just as Syria has turned to using fighter jets for bombing raids, so you can bet that both nations wouldn't hesitate to use the Eurofighters against their own citizens should they become similarly restive.  Indeed, the Shia minority in Saudi Arabia is already being ruthlessly repressed, while the slightest sign of protest in the UAE has been cracked down on hard.  The incredible thing is that both countries are complaining bitterly about how the West has responded to the Arab spring despite our leaders barely whispering a word of criticism about the situation in Bahrain, and only reacting to events elsewhere as they happened.  The Saudis have become so paranoid at developments that they genuinely believe there's a region wide Iran-led conspiracy to undermine majority Sunni states, at the exact same time as they fund the Salafis arriving to fight against the Ba'athist dictatorship in Syria.  To come back to Kawcyznski, he was glib enough to say we have to "consider what would happen if Saudi Arabia was in the hands of an extremist Muslim government".  Does he mean one that sponsors international terrorism?

The reality is that we've long run scared of the Saudis, and as with so much else in politics, those formerly in positions of influence have since joined up with the defence companies they used to deal with.  Former Saudi ambassador Sherard Cowper-Coles, who was instrumental in getting the Serious Fraud Office investigation into the al-Yamanah deal dropped, is now BAE's international business development director.  No doubt the princes that escaped the ignominy of having their corrupt dealings exposed will be eternally grateful.

Still, when David Cameron says that there are no "no-go areas" when it comes to discussing human rights, he's clearly telling the truth.  There are no "no-go areas" because they just don't enter into the dealing.  When Iran is so clearly the enemy, regardless of how we aren't set on fully cooperating with an attack at the moment, our friendship with the nations that'll provide us with bases from where attacks can either be launched or coordinated is far more important than the slightest concern for those without even the most basic rights.  But hey, both Saudi Arabia and the UAE are high on the human development index, and isn't that all that matters?

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11/06/2012 12:30:00 am | | | links to this post

Tuesday, September 25, 2012 

Who says we're abandoning our traditions?

In keeping with the glorious tradition of the British military training future dictators, it's just swell to see that not only were senior Syrian military figures given the once over back here in Blighty, no doubt instructed in how to handle demonstrations without resorting immediately to shelling the protesters, but that soldiers from both Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo have also been welcomed with open arms to Sandhurst.  While Sudan isn't quite in the same dire straits as Syria, protests have been on-going there since the beginning of the Arab spring, while the DRC has never recovered from the two Congo wars and the Kivu conflict.  Doubtless some of the training has been put to good practical use rather than to just disrupt protests and crack down on dissent, yet it's hardly surprising there's cynicism about exactly what purpose these links fulfil.

How unlike our continuing connection and cooperation with the government of Bahrain, as how can you possibly be cynical about something so out in the open? And how in any case could anyone be critical of what is and has long been such a lucrative mutual relationship?  We send them John Yates to give their police advice on how to stall investigations respect human rights, and they bung us £3 million quid for a new sports hall at Sandhurst while buying British-made lethal weaponry at our premier arms fair.  Everyone's a winner.  Oh, except for the poor sods who don't much like living under an all but absolute monarchy directly connected to the House of Saud.

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9/25/2012 05:40:00 pm | | | links to this post

Wednesday, July 11, 2012 

John Yates says it's fine, so who are we to disagree?


Considering the amount of adverse comment on the holding of the Bahrain grand prix earlier in the year, it's fascinating to learn that our glorious government decided it was fine for officials from the Bahrani government to visit the DSEi arms fair in September of 2011. By contrast, those lily-livered Americans only gave the go ahead for weapon sales to resume in May of this year, and then supposedly they wouldn't be supplying anything that could be used for "crowd control".

We of course couldn't care less about the citizens of countries whose governments are just one step removed from major allies like Saudi Arabia, while we pretend to care deeply about the civilians in Syria, closely allied as the Assad regime is with Iran. It's not exactly surprisisng then that there has been almost no coverage whatsoever of the protests in Qatif in the House of Saud's happy kingdom, this New York Times piece a notable exception. When there's tens of thousands protesting against the most tyrannical ruling class in the whole of the Middle East, it's about time those who have been romanticising the Free Syrian Army changed the record.

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7/11/2012 09:36:00 pm | | | links to this post

Wednesday, June 20, 2012 

Too early to tell.

I was going to start this post off by quoting Zhou Enlai, who when asked about the effects of the French revolution purportedly said that it was too soon to say. Only, as such witticisms often are, it all seems to have been a misunderstanding based on translation. Enlai wasn't referring to the revolution of 1789, but to the student rising of May '68, some three years previous. Still a fair while to not be able to draw a judgement, but not quite as indicative of supposed Chinese reflection on history as has been implied.

So much for that then. Except it is about time we at least took stock of where the Arab spring has led, a year and seven months on. Only Tunisia, where the protests began, can claim to have experienced both genuine revolution, and then also succeeded in following the initial phase up with free democratic elections. Even so, it can't be pretended that everything there is rosy: the Islamist Ennahada party, having won the largest share of the vote in the elections, has been remarkably indulgent of Salafist opinion and direct action, prosecuting a cinema owner who screened Persepolis after protesters claimed the film was blasphemous, while last week it blamed "provocations and insults" after Salafis defaced works of art and then rioted in the capital, leading the government to order a city wide night curfew.

In Egypt, the counter-revolution by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces looks to have been timed to perfection. Having let elections take place that resulted in the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice party and a Salafi coalition dominating parliament, it waited until Mubarak's conviction was certain before striking back. A ruling has since dissolved parliament, and this week SCAF issued amendments to the interim constitutional declaration drastically limiting the president's power. This came as the MB's presidential candidate Mohammed Morsi claimed he had the won the run-off against the former prime minister Ahmad Shafiq, something denied by the latter who claims he is in fact victorious. Tonight it's being reported that tomorrow's announcement of the official result has been delayed indefinitely, ostensibly due to complaints from both parties, but coming so soon after the other interventions from the military it's hard not worry about whether this is a further attempt at a power grab.

Libya, despite or rather in spite of the NATO intervention is in an even worse state. Elections that were due to be held yesterday were postponed earlier in the month until July the 9th, supposedly on the grounds of "logistical and technical" reasons, although more likely is the fact that vast swathes of the country are still in the control of local militias rather than that of the Transitional National Council. Gone almost unreported is that four International Criminal Court officials continue to be held by the militia in Zintan, on the ludicrous grounds that Australian lawyer Melinda Taylor was passing "coded messages" to Saif al-Islam Gaddafi. Far from condemning the seizure, Australian foreign minister Bob Carr seems ready to "apologise" about the mission in an attempt to free the four, who are stuck as much in the power struggle between Tripoli and the militias as they are due to disagreement with the ICC over where the trials of former regime figures should be held (can you imagine the protests if Syrian forces had taken into custody some of the UN monitors?). The battle at Tripoli airport only underlined how volatile the country remains, while Benghazi and Misrata, the two cities most associated with the revolution look as though they could go their own way, having already held local elections.

Little more really needs to be said about the disaster unfolding in Syria. In Yemen, President Saleh handed over power, but this seems to have only postponed renewed protests should any attempt be made by his successor Abdo Rabbuh Mansur Al-Hadi to serve longer than the two years the power transfer agreement laid out. Bahrain continues to prosecute those it claims took part in protests, the latest being an 11-year-old boy, the uprising of last year having been crushed by troops sent in from Saudi Arabia and Emirate states. With the wonderful John Yates in charge of reforming policing, having moved from deciding one group of crooks needn't be investigated to another, and the United States announcing that it will resume weapon sales to the country regardless of the continuing crackdown, things can clearly only get better for those demanding their rights in the country. Saudi Arabia itself meanwhile is mourning the death of Prince Nayef, with many governments across the world expressing their condolences. None however are likely to mention that today Muree bin Ali bin Issa al-Asiri was executed having been convicted of "witchcraft and sorcery".

Certain patterns have emerged. As throughout history, those who first agitate for and succeed in overthrowing their rulers often find their revolution stolen from them or otherwise subverted, as in France (see above), Russia in 1917 with the February revolution being overtaken by the Bolshevik uprising in October, and Iran in 1979 when what had began as a rising against the Shah was transformed into an anointment of Ayatollah Khomeini. In Tunisia and Egypt the protesters were overwhelmingly young, secular and relatively liberal, and yet the main beneficiaries were Islamic parties. Partially down to the Muslim Brotherhood and other similar groupings having long dominated the underground opposition movement, it was also partially down to the usual failure of the left, liberals and secular groups in general to unite around a common party or figure. In the Egyptian presidential election the MB's Morsi faced off against five main candidates opposing him and the so-called "remnants", the end result being the inevitable run off between him and a former regime figure.

More broadly, it showcases the continuing disaster of the belief that leaderless organisations and campaigns are the future of political opposition. Facebook and Twitter may well have been instrumental in the initial success of the Arab spring; they've certainly helped Western journalists to report on the views of protesters, as well as spreading unverifiable propaganda. What those using social networking have not been able to do is put together a coherent message after the first, and relatively easiest part of the process of removing a tyrannical government from power has been achieved, let alone organise themselves to the extent of being able to win anything approaching power themselves. The most obvious example of this failure is rather closer to home: heard anything from what was Occupy LSX recently? Nope, thought not.

The end result has been only marginally less repressive forces than those which were initially ousted have taken control. Tunisia is probably slightly better off than it was under Ben Ali, and Ennahada might take decisive action against the Salafis should their demands for Sharia escalate further. Elsewhere, the picture's fairly bleak. Egypt could almost be back where it started, even if Mubarak is close to death; Libya is likely to effectively break up into constituent parts; Syria is between the rock of Assad and the hard place of the Free Syria Army; and Yemen and Bahrain are nowhere nearer true democracy than they were in December 2010. It really is too early to tell how the Arab spring will play out, but it's not exactly looking good.

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6/20/2012 09:58:00 pm | | | links to this post

Tuesday, March 22, 2011 

The tiger who came to tea.


One question that remains completely unanswered and which shamefully hasn't even really been posed in just what exactly it was that first motivated David Cameron to begin pushing for a no-fly zone over Libya. As elegant while at the same time unconvincing as his claim is that not intervening would have once again left a failed pariah state off the coast of Europe with all the problems that would have entailed, that doesn't begin to explain just why he was one of the first to look at a no-fly zone.

Certainly, he has never presented himself as anything other than a pragmatic realist on foreign policy, while before becoming prime minister his most notable statement on the liberal interventionist ideal was that "we cannot drop democracy from 10,000 feet", and to include a part of the quote which is often cut off, "and we shouldn't try". At the same time though he's surrounded himself with cabinet allies whom are either stridently neo-conservative in their outlook - Michael Gove and Liam Fox - or are at least sympathetically inclined - George Osborne and William Hague. No one is suggesting however that it was any of these figures that lent upon on Cameron to support the no-fly zone.

The best attempt at an explanation put forward so far is easily that of Paulinlincs, who invokes Jim Bullpitt and the concept of high politics, and then adds a class based analysis on top of it. He posits that this is precisely the sort of crisis that past practitioners of Tory high politics found themselves most at ease with, and which helpfully distracts from precisely the increasing economic problems and reversals likely to be forthcoming on the reform front.

There are certainly problems with this analysis, not least that it also seems to be consuming the majority of the Labour front bench, who can't all be tarred with the same upper-class political leader brush. It does however help to understand just why while we're bombing the army of one democracy denying tyrant, we're strangely inviting round the foreign minister of one of the most totalitarian regimes on the planet and treating him to a cosy chat with tea and biscuits.

Just like many, including myself, found it rather perplexing that Cameron and friends thought it was a spiffing idea to go on a tour of autocratic Gulf states last month with a bunch of arms dealers in tow just as those we're now were protecting in Libya were rising up against their leaders, so it seems strange that as we're defending the Libyan intifada from the air round comes Prince Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, representative of the nation that just helped put down the incipient Bahrain uprising. Faisal, lest we forget, also said just a couple of weeks ago referring to potential disturbances in his own country that they "would cut off any finger" raised against the regime, presumably to make a change from taking the whole hand. It's difficult not to envisage a literal recreation of the famous Low cartoon following the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, with Cameron saying "the butcher of Bahrain, I believe?" with Faisal responding "the angel of Benghazi, I presume?"

The reality is that Cameron sees no contradiction between selling weapons to regimes which are only ever going to use them against their own people and using deadly force to stop a potential massacre while our main ally in the region actively helps to squash a related revolution. It isn't because of our interests in not riling the Saudis just as the oil price continues to rise, although that's a factor. It's instead due to how he actively genuflects towards just such dynastic, hereditary rulers, just as he does towards the monarchy in this country. This isn't realpolitik; it's something far more base. How else could both he and Hague with a straight face say that they wanted to work with Saudi Arabia to "promote sensible dialogue" in the region if they didn't genuinely believe it?

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3/22/2011 11:49:00 pm | | | links to this post

Monday, March 14, 2011 

Some revolutions are more equal than others.


You really do have to hand it to the Saudis, in a way: they could have chosen any point over almost the last month to humbly request the permission of the Bahrani royal family to come in and safeguard the island kingdom's key facilities from the grubby hands of the Shia majority, who've spent that same time period continually protesting for reform. Instead they've bided their time, and have duly found the most opportune moment in which to invade occupy provide assistance to their friends in their hour of need. With the world's attention quite rightly on the human catastrophe in Japan, and with the West bickering over just how we should further sabotage the Libyan uprising, no one's going to pay much heed to allies helping out allies, are they?

Well, the United States and our good selves sure aren't. Just as we've demanded that the tyrant Gadaffi leave immediately, we've said precisely nothing whatsoever about the crackdown by the House of Saud on anyone daring to express even the mildest dissent against their enlightened reign. Last week saw all protests banned ahead of a optimistically planned "Day of Rage", which sadly but predictably seems to have failed to take place. That suits us just fine, it has to be said: if there's one thing we desperately need when the rest of the Arab world is finding its voice, it's for the Saudis and their oil to keep flowing with no interruptions whatsoever. As our leaders demand that the dictators and autocrats we've propped up for the last few decades heed the anger of their people, and they consider whether stability without freedom isn't really stability at all, the last thing we need is any rocking of the boat on the black gold front. Both ourselves and the Americans have substantial interests in Bahrain after all: the US Fifth Fleet, integral to operations in Iraq, is based off the capital, Manama.

Indeed, according to the US, today's deployment of 1,000 Saudi troops in armoured 4x4s with 500 police from the United Arab Emirates is most certainly not an invasion. Even so, the usual calls for "restraint" are being made. Restraint is always an interesting word to use when it comes to protests, as its carries an obvious, ominous double meaning with it: before the US finally decided after days of procrastination to dispense with Mubarak, it had urged the protesters and the police across Egypt to restrain themselves, as though the two were equals and both culpable. Laughable as that was, at least the Egyptian people were confident they had the army on their side: in Bahrain, the protesters are now having to face up to the realisation that the crack troops of another nation entirely are now lined up against them, beholden only to their own completely unaccountable rulers. Nothing could be more provocative, and yet all we can do is murmur restraint at this chilling development.

It certainly has the potential to be incredibly embarrassing to David Cameron. Before he decided that intervening in one specific uprising was imperative, he went on a tour of some of the nations in the Gulf Co-Operation Council, all while chiding those of us suggesting that this was the wrong time to be flogging weapons to vile dictatorships. It was absurd that we would deny such countries the right to defend themselves, and who better to supply these threatened nations with such devices of self-defence than Britain? Among the goodies we sold Saudi Arabia last year were 4-wheel drive vehicles and armoured personnel carriers; by a strange, spooky coincidence, it just so happens that among the convoy crossing the causeway into Bahrain from SA were 4-wheel drive vehicles and what look suspiciously like armoured personnel carriers.

Doubtless we can be reassured that their destructive capability will only be used if the Bahrani protesters fail to restrain themselves. It definitely wouldn't look good if rather than arming the rebels in Libya, we had instead inadvertently supplied the counter-revolutionaries in Bahrain with their tools of repression. Some revolutions however can clearly be sacrificed; all are equal, but some are more equal than others.

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3/14/2011 11:59:00 pm | | | links to this post

Wednesday, July 30, 2008 

A victory for the arms dealers, the kleptocrats and the government.

It's been buried thanks to the oh so exciting David Miliband article in the Grauniad, but the House of Lords today made a ruling which will potentially affect the rule of law and justice in this country for decades to come. Overruling Lord Justice Moses and Sullivan, who had came to the decision that the Serious Fraud Office had acted unlawfully in dropping the investigation into the BAE Systems slush fund, after the Saudis threatened not just to withdraw their co-operation on counter-terrorism, but also specifically made the chilling comment "that British lives on British streets" were at risk were it not be stopped, the law lords have very narrowly decided that the SFO director was acting lawfully.

Unlike Moses and Sullivan, the law lords have taken the view, like the government, that such threats are either a "matter or regret" or a "fact of life". It doesn't matter how outrageous the threats were, how if they had been made by a British citizen that he could have been charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice, as both the attorney general and Robert Wardle followed the correct procedures in deciding to drop the case, the Royal Courts of Justice were wrong in declaring that the initial decision was unlawful.

Legally, this can be understood and accepted. It however frightfully ignores the much larger, bigger picture: that the UK government was to all intents and purposes being blackmailed by one of its supposed allies. That is of course if we accept that the threats were to be followed through, which in itself is by no means clear. Even if the Saudis had withdrawn their counter-terrorism co-operation, all such information is now pooled between the main intelligence agencies, meaning that the CIA for one would have forwarded it on to MI5/6 as a matter of course. To give the impression that this threat was more real than it was, the Saudi ambassador expressly made the statement that "British lives on British streets" were at risk if the inquiry was not dropped. Rather than tell the Saudis to get off their high horse and make clear that due to the separation of powers such an investigation could not be called off by politicians, the government meekly gave in, as Moses and Sullivan initially ruled. Robert Wardle, the director of the SFO, had little choice but to cancel the inquiry, as it was clear if he didn't the politicians, including the attorney general, would go ahead and do so anyway.

It takes a moment to digest exactly what sort of precedent this sets. This ruling more or less means that any foreign power, whether an ally or not, can threaten our national security whether directly or indirectly in any case where one of their citizens or otherwise is being tried or even investigated, and we the citizens can do absolutely nothing to challenge the government if it decides that such threats are serious enough to drop that investigation or trial, as long as they have acted appropriately, as the law lords decided Wardle and Lord Goldsmith had. Say that by some miracle or another that the man accused of murdering Alexander Litvinenko, Andrei Lugovoi, was captured and to be put on trial. Russia wouldn't even have to necessarily threaten violence to stop the trial, all it would have to do is threaten to sever ties on helping with national security, or to not pass on information it has on terrorist activities, and the government could therefore conclude that as more lives than just one are being threatened, it would be perfectly lawful for the prosecution of Lugovoi to be dropped.

In practice, it's unlikely that such an extreme case would ever occur. No, what instead is apparent here that from the very beginning the government wanted the SFO inquiry into the slush fund dropped, not because the Saudis were making threats, but because BAE themselves wanted it dropped. It's been established time and again that BAE may as well be a nationalised company, such is the power it has over ministers. The Guardian's expose which initially altered the authorities to the slush fund connected with the al-Yamamah deal was severely embarrassing, even if it didn't have New Labour's fingers all over it. It proved what long been suspected: that BAE and the government had provided the Saudis with massive sweeteners so the deal went ahead, potentially over a £1bn in bribes, which enabled Prince Bandar to buy a private jet, and which was also spent on prostitutes, sports cars and yachts among other things. All of this is helped along through massive public subsidy: up to £850m a year. In other words, we are directly funding the Saudi royal family's taste in whores and vehicles, while its people suffer under one of the most authoritarian, discriminatory and corrupt governments in the world. Despite everything else, it really is all about the arms deals and the oil. The government got its way because it realised it could rely on the spurious defence of "national security". Moses and Sullivan didn't fall for that. The law lords don't either, and one of them, Baroness Hale, even made clear that she was very uncomfortable with having to overrule them, but had little legal option other than to.

The government response to the initial ruling, which understandably horrified them, was to completely ignore it except to appeal against it. There doesn't seem to have been any reaction today either. The groups that brought the initial challenge, CAAT and Corner House were far from silent:

Nicholas Hildyard of The Corner House said:

"Now we know where we are. Under UK law, a supposedly independent prosecutor can do nothing to resist a threat made by someone abroad if the UK government claims that the threat endangers national security.
"The unscrupulous who have friends in high places overseas willing to make such threats now have a 'Get Out of Jail Free' card -- and there is nothing the public can do to hold the government to account if it abuses its national security powers. Parliament needs urgently to plug this gaping hole in the law and in the constitutional checks and balances dealing with national security.
"With the law as it is, a government can simply invoke 'national security' to drive a coach and horses through international anti-bribery legislation, as the UK government has done, to stop corruption investigations."

Symon Hill of CAAT said:

"BAE and the government will be quickly disappointed if they think that this ruling will bring an end to public criticism. Throughout this case we have been overwhelmed with support from people in all walks of life. There has been a sharp rise in opposition to BAE's influence in the corridors of power. Fewer people are now taken in by exaggerated claims about British jobs dependent on Saudi arms deals. The government has been judged in the court of public opinion. The public know that Britain will be a better place when BAE is no longer calling the shots."

This ruling, as if it needed stating again, is far, far more serious than last week's involving Max Mosley. The media however on this case, with the exception of the Guardian or Independent fully supported the government's craven surrender, and will do the same over today's decision. When it personally affects them and their business models they will scream and scream until they're sick; when it potentially means, however spuriously, that "lives are at risk", they jump straight behind the government, and, of course, the money. Such is how democracy in this country works. The rule of law, justice being blind and everything else associated always comes second.

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7/30/2008 09:11:00 pm | | | links to this post

Wednesday, January 30, 2008 

Not much intelligence from the Intelligence and Security Committee.

Continuing with the security theme, yesterday saw the release of the annual report from the Intelligence and Security Committee. The last report they issued was the gobsmacking whitewash on extraordinary rendition, which decided that MI5's involvement in the CIA kidnapping of Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna because they'd changed the definition of what exactly an "extraordinary rendition" is. To quote from the toadying, ridiculously trusting report:

D.Those operations detailed above, involving UK Agencies’ knowledge or involvement, are “Renditions to Justice”, “Military Renditions”and “Renditions to “the Detention”. They are not “Extraordinary Renditions”, which we define as extra-judicial transfer of persons from one jurisdiction or State to another, for the purposes of detention and interrogation outside the normal legal system,where there is a real risk of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment”.

The security services were therefore cleared of any complicit involvement in extraordinary rendition. Aren't our investigating parliamentary committees wonderful?

Just where do you go from issuing such a laughable written record of sycophancy and admiring disregard for anything other than a clean bill of health for our glorious saviours in MI5 and SIS? To an even more hilariously censored account (PDF) which manages to inform you of almost precisely nothing you didn't already know.

Richard Norton-Taylor on CiF has already said it best, but the whole report has to be read to be believed. There isn't a page that goes by that isn't affected in some way by material it's felt to sensitive for the public to read, and so is instead replaced with asterisks. Predictably, we aren't told how much the security services are either spending or being allocated in funding, but some of the removals just make the whole thing completely impossible to understand or make your marvel at just what the point of even bothering to issue a report was. There's this for example:

We are now engaged in a range of counter-terrorism work; direct pursuit of terrorists, ***, capacity-building with key [countries,] and – this is an absolutely vital point
– ***.
***
***. So put like that and defined like that, this takes up about 56 per cent of our effort… and it is rising.

Or:

SIS has improved its *** and its understanding of the factors that have the potential to affect radicalisation and extremism in the UK.

Its what? Its cookery? Its archery? Its performance? Its dick waving?

The media have focused on the fact that GCHQ suffered from flooding last year and the report's inquest into that, but far more interesting is the report's comments on media relations, the stopping of the SFO inquiry into the BAE slush fund and the possibility of intercept evidence being made admissible. These seem to be Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller's comments on the coverage of the Birmingham beheading plot raids:

We were very angry, but it is not clear who we should be angry with, that most of the story of the arrests in Op GAMBLE were in the media very, very fast. Indeed, before the arrests in Birmingham, the press were pre-positioned and before the police had picked up one of the plotters and the surveillance was still out looking for them, the story was in the press.

So the case was potentially jeopardised by the exposure of what the story was. My officers and the police were jeopardised by them being on operations when the story broke. The strategy of the police for interrogating those arrested was blown out of the water, and my staff felt pretty depressed about the fact that this had happened.

We've never got to the bottom of who was behind the leaking, mainly to the Scum, but most of the fingers were being pointed directly at the Home Office. Not that they're the only guilty parties; the Met, the security services themselves and other interested parties have all leaked stories for their own benefit in recent years. The solution to this though doesn't appear to be to ensure that accurate, non-sensationalist information is supplied by the police or others when arrests are made, transparently making the news available to all rather than just a few, but instead to tighten the screw on the media in its entirety, with again predictably the complaint being that "lives are at risk":

The current system for handling national security information through DA-Notices, and the Agencies’ relationships with the media more generally, is not working as effectively as it might and this is putting lives at risk. We recommend that the Government engage with the media to develop a new, effective system, with a view to protecting intelligence work, operations, sources and criminal prosecutions, whilst ensuring that the media continue to report on important matters of public interest.

The government engage with the media? Who is the committee kidding? Either it will put down more chilling legislation which rather than affecting the sensationalism in the aftermath of the foiling of a "plot" will instead stop legitimate reporting and investigation, or it'll do nothing.

The committee's unquestioning approach to the evidence given them by the security services is once again highlighted by their pitiful investigation into whether there really was a threat of the Saudis withdrawing intelligence cooperation if the SFO investigation into corruption continued:

106. We asked the Chief of SIS about the Saudi threat to withdraw co-operation:

There was some suggestion in some of the media coverage that there was no *** threat to our co-operation… that is not true. There were threats made to the existence of the co-operation [and] there was reason to take those threats seriously…

If the committee is well briefed, it would know that the intelligence between all the major western intelligence agencies is now pooled and shared. Even if the Saudis had withdrawn their cooperation with SIS, they would never dare remove their cooperation with the Americans, who in any case would then have submitted the same information to us. If John Scarlett was questioned about that, it sure isn't in the report.

U. The Committee is satisfied that, at the time, there were serious national security considerations which contributed to the Serious Fraud Ofice’s decision to halt the investigation into BAE Systems’ dealings with Saudi Arabia.

Even if there were, it was still the equivalent of giving into blackmail and letting a foreign country dictate to us what we could and could not do in relation to more than substantiated allegations of corruption. We would never give in to such demands from terrorists or the likes of Iran, so why with our supposed friends? The rule of law means nothing when it comes to continuing the arming of a country with one of the worst human rights records in the Middle East.

Onto intercept evidence. Surprise, surprise, the agencies are firmly against, and the committee certainly isn't convinced either:

113. The Agencies, however, are adamant that their intercept capabilities must not be disclosed in court. If they were, criminals and terrorists would quickly learn what the Agencies can and cannot do, and would emd means of avoiding detection, which would then damage their capability and coverage. Other countries, however, allow the use of intercept as evidence without any adverse impact on their security and intelligence capability, so what makes the UK different?

GCHQ points to a unique combination of factors in the UK:

The UK is the only country which has all three of the following things: an adversarial legal system, subordination to [the European Convention on Human Rights] and a strategic intercept and SIGINT capacity that is worth protecting.

The tabloids' aversion to the HRA seems to be contagious; even the security agencies are now making spurious allusions to the ECHR somehow making it obvious how intercept evidence can't possibly be made admissible. The next paragraph is completely open about how poor some of the intercept evidence is, rather than "strategic" and "worth protecting":

In practice, because of the UK’s adversarial legal system, the defence would be able to test the validity of evidence and thereby explore how it was obtained. As communications technology evolves (particularly internet protocol), we understand it may be dificult for the Agencies to be able to prove intercept to an evidential standard.

So there you are. Admittance that the evidence which currently means those on control orders can't be prosecuted is so flaky or unable to back-up that it would be unlikely to stand up in court. No wonder that the agencies are against it; the last thing they want to look is either stupid or for it to be shown that men innocent of any crime have been held under the equivalent of house arrest for years on their say so.

117. The Director of GCHQ summarised the test for allowing intercept:

… a change to allow intercept as evidence should be introduced only when doing so would have a net benfeit in securing the safety and the security of the UK. By that I mean not just convicting and imprisoning criminals, but also preventing crimes and terrorist actions.

Which just happens to be a test which you'll never be able to come to a definitive conclusion about. Best not to even try then; after all, who cares about those stuck in the eternal limbo of the control order regime, driven to severe depression like Cerie Bullivant, whose only crime seems to have been to have associated with relatives of the fertiliser bomb plotter Anthony Garcia, who had his order quashed yesterday by a judge who was heavily critical of the Home Office.

Its conclusion then:

V. Intercept is of crucial importance to the capability of the Agencies to protect the UK, its citizens and its interests overseas. Any move to permit the use of intercept evidence in court proceedings must be on a basis that does not jeopardise that capability.

In other words, more blackmail. Introduce this and we won't be able to do our jobs properly. Never mind that numerous other countries in Europe also signed up to the ECHR manage it, and that the security services are more than happy with the results of their bugging, crucial to the Crevice trial and now the beheading plot being made available as evidence, intercept would be a step too far. Just what are they so scared of?

The only real showing of teeth by the committee was being denied access to a document prepared for ministers about "an important matter", apparently related to a foreign operation, which the foreign secretary at the time was happy to be given them. The prime minister didn't agree, and the committee said that doesn't say much about his previous pledge to make the committee more transparent.

Indeed, Brown and this government's intentions of doing just that could not be more summed up than in the choice of who to replace Paul Murphy, previous chairman and now the Welsh secretary after Peter Hain's resignation. Margaret Beckett, whose previous performance in her last two jobs, as head of DEFRA and then foreign secretary were both execrable, could not be either more establishment or less likely to ask the pertinent questions needed of the security services. So much too for the independent investigator that the committee was promised. The only way the security services will ever be held properly to account will be if a watchdog similar to the Independent Police Complaints Commission or the Information Commissioner were to be set-up. Why for instance should the head of MI5 be able to make doommongering statements about the terrorist threat in public and then refuse to give evidence to a parliamentary committee under the same scrutiny? Just how far the inroads into everyday life the security services are making were revealed in statistics released this week by Sir Paul Kennedy, which showed that more than 250,000 requests were made to monitor phone-calls, emails and post in just 9 months. The surveillance state is ever growing, yet there is not even the slightest attempt to provide accountability. That simply has to change.

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1/30/2008 09:30:00 pm | | | links to this post

Monday, October 29, 2007 

It really is all about the oil. Oh, and don't forget the arms deals.

The aftermath of a beheading in Saudi Arabia. There have 117 so far this year.

What word(s) is/are best to describe the government of Saudi Arabia? Dave Osler uses petrotheocracy, which has a certain ring to it. I've always enjoyed kleptocracy, which is perhaps best to describe China, for instance, and certainly goes some way towards summing up bribes in the region of £1bn to key members of the Saudi royal family. Autocracy, unaccountable, oligarchy, all are similarly suitable, but all lack a certain something. Perhaps we ought to look to the Liberal Democrats for insight, especially as Vince Cable has made a courageous stand to boycott his meeting with "King" Abdullah. Mike Hancock recently referred to those who forced out Ming Campbell as a "complete shower of shits", but even that seems a little too staid for my liking. How about a collection of theocratic, democracy denying, corrupt cunts?

Petty insults aside, the sheer gall of New Labour in inviting those ultimately responsible for the torture of four British citizens wrongly arrested for a series of bombings in the country shouldn't be surprising, but the pulling out of all the stops for their visit is the equivalent of a kick in the teeth to those who dare to suggest that the government ought to be consistent in its approach to all those who deny basic human rights to their people.

As has been pointed out, we'd never dream of inviting Robert Mugabe to have dinner with the Queen, or the head of the Burmese junta to meet both the prime minister and the leaders of the other main political parties, but as for the Saudi royal family, which if anything presides over a state far more vicious and discriminatory than that of the one in Burma, they're not just welcomed with open arms, we have ministers claiming that the two states should unite around their "shared values". Whether this means that we'll be banning women from driving, while making certain that they're covered from head to toe whilst out in public, re-instituting absolute monarchy, bringing back flogging, banning all religions other than Christianity and removing all rights to privacy is unclear; perhaps it'll just mean prolonged detention without charge for critics of the Dear Leader.

A better comparison might perhaps be made with Iran. Like with the examples mentioned above, it's hard to think of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad being invited to share tea and scones with Liz, or Ayatollah Khamenei shaking hands with David Cameron. Iran is simply beyond the pale; she sponsors terrorism and is building nuclear weapons, don't you know? Both sit on veritable seas of oil, but while if we proposed selling fighter jets to Iran Melanie Phillips would probably explode, Saudi Arabia is an entirely different kettle of fish. While Iran's executions of juveniles and other human rights abuses are possibly worse than those in Saudi, Iran at least has something resembling democracy when it comes to electing the president and the legislature, natives of Saudi Arabia have to make to do with essentially meaningless municipal elections, where women were denied the vote, although it's been solemnly promised they will have it in 2009.

All this moral equivalence doesn't really add up to much in the long run. It ought to be this simple: Saudi Arabia is an theocratic autocracy. Its strict state sponsored interpretation of Islam, and efforts to spread such an interpretation has greatly contributed to the rise of takfirist Salafism, the kind which al-Qaida takes its cue from. It is endemically corrupt, one of most corrupt regimes on the planet, and it effectively steals the wealth that should belong to its people. The fact that it supports either the "war on terror" or that if the regime fell the replacement could possibly be worse shouldn't really enter it to it. We ought to deal with it, of course, as we should with Iran. We need to help and encourage the reform process, but there's only so far that a reform process can go in such a country, completely unlike in Iran. What we should most certainly not be doing is inviting its rulers to have a nice chat with our own head of state with full regalia, or selling it weapons on a grand scale, which could conceivably be used against an uprising of its own people, especially when there are so many allegations that the deals have involved such huge sums of money going to those who negotiated them.

Instead, what we have at the moment is a country with an appalling record on all fronts holding all the cards. When the Serious Fraud Office gets close to uncovering the full scale of the corruption involved in the Al-Yamamah deal, they threaten to cut off their intelligence links and cancel their next big order, resulting in those with a hand in the till also mounting a specious campaign to call the inquiry off. Rather than calling their bluff, knowing full well that they'll continue to share it with the CIA even if they did act on their words, our former glorious leader ordered the attorney general to put a stop to such an embarrassment. As King Abdullah arrives and the criticism reaches fever pitch, he laughably suggests that Saudi intelligence could have stopped 7/7, thereby making everyone doubly aware of how vital it is that we continue to have close relations with his nation, even if his claims are about as credible as the ones currently being raised at the Diana inquest. If one of our political representatives has the balls to suggest that this visit isn't in our long term best interests and that he's decided to boycott it, Her Majesty's Opposition calls it "juvenile gesture politics", while they just think about all the additional arms deals they could do once New Labour finally enters the annals of history. Best to make a good impression, right?

Our relationship with Saudi Arabia is one of our sorriest in recent times. Even when outrages like the torture of our own innocent citizens take place, so careful are we to ensure that dealings continue in the fog of good vibes as they have for decades, we go out of our way to make certain that they can't apply for compensation from even the individuals responsible, let alone from the state itself. John McDonnell has said it best:
"We are feting this man because Saudi Arabia controls 25 per cent of the world's oil, and because we sell him billions of pounds' worth of weapons. It is an insult to everything Britain stands for to put these geopolitical concerns ahead of the rights of women, trade unionists and all Saudi people."
This was one of the men who Gordon Brown described during the leadership campaign as "simply not having support for their views in the Labour party." This royal visit has proved one thing. Brown and the others supportive of it are more happy in the company of a dictator than they are in those with whom they are meant to have common cause.

Related post:
Chicken Yogurt - Monsters Inc.

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10/29/2007 11:18:00 pm | | | links to this post

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