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King Abdullah flies in to lecture us on terrorism
By Robert Fisk
10/30/07 "The
Independent" -- -- In what world do these people
live? True, there'll be no public executions outside Buckingham
Palace when His Royal Highness rides in stately formation down
The Mall. We gave up capital punishment about half a century
ago. There won't even be a backhander – or will there? – which
is the Saudi way of doing business. But for King Abdullah to
tell the world, as he did in a BBC interview yesterday, that
Britain is not doing enough to counter "terrorism", and that
most countries are not taking it as seriously as his country is,
is really pushing it. Weren't most of the 11 September 2001
hijackers from – er – Saudi Arabia? Is this the land that is
really going to teach us lessons?
The sheer implausibility of the claim that Saudi intelligence
could have prevented the ondon bombings if only the British
Government had taken it seriously, seems to have passed the
Saudi monarch by. "We have sent information to Great Britain
before the terrorist attacks in Britain but unfortunately no
action was taken. And it may have been able to maybe avert the
tragedy," he told the BBC. This claim is frankly incredible.
The sad, awful truth is that we fete these people, we fawn on
them, we supply them with fighter jets, whisky and whores. No,
of course, there will be no visas for this reporter because
Saudi Arabia is no democracy. Yet how many times have we been
encouraged to think otherwise about a state that will not even
allow its women to drive? Kim Howells, the Foreign Office
minister, was telling us again yesterday that we should work
more closely with the Saudis, because we "share values" with
them. And what values precisely would they be, I might ask?
Saudi Arabia is a state which bankrolled – a definite no-no this
for discussion today – Saddam's legions as they invaded Iran in
1980 (with our Western encouragement, let it be added). And
which said nothing – a total and natural silence – when Saddam
swamped the Iranians with gas. The Iraqi war communiqué made no
bones about it. "The waves of insects are attacking the eastern
gates of the Arab nation. But we have the pesticides to wipe
them out."
Did the Saudi royal family protest? Was there any sympathy for
those upon whom the pesticides would be used? No. The then
Keeper of the Two Holy Places was perfectly happy to allow gas
to be used because he was paying for it – components were
supplied, of course, by the US – while the Iranians died in
hell. And we Brits are supposed to be not keeping up with our
Saudi friends when they are "cracking down on terrorism".
Like the Saudis were so brilliant in cracking down on terror in
1979 when hundreds of gunmen poured into the Great Mosque at
Mecca, an event so mishandled by a certain commander of the
Saudi National Guard called Prince Abdullah that they had to
call in toughs from a French intervention force. And it was a
former National Guard officer who led the siege.
Saudi Arabia's role in the 9/11 attacks has still not been fully
explored. Senior members of the royal family expressed the shock
and horror expected of them, but no attempt was made to examine
the nature of Wahhabism, the state religion, and its inherent
contempt for all representation of human activity or death. It
was Saudi Muslim legal iconoclasm which led directly to the
destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan by the Taliban, Saudi
Arabia's friends. And only weeks after Kamal Salibi, a Lebanese
history professor, suggested in the late 1990s that once-Jewish
villages in what is now Saudi Arabia might have been locations
in the Bible, the Saudis sent bulldozers to destroy the ancient
buildings there.
In the name of Islam, Saudi organisations have destroyed
hundreds of historic structures in Mecca and Medina and UN
officials have condemned the destruction of Ottoman buildings in
Bosnia by a Saudi aid agency, which decided they were
"idolatrous". Were the twin towers in New York another piece of
architecture which Wahhabis wanted to destroy?
Nine years ago a Saudi student at Harvard produced a remarkable
thesis which argued that US forces had suffered casualties in
bombing attacks in Saudi Arabia because American intelligence
did not understand Wahhabism and had underestimated the extent
of hostility to the US presence in the kingdom. Nawaf Obaid even
quoted a Saudi National Guard officer as saying "the more
visible the Americans became, the darker I saw the future of the
country". The problem is that Wahhabi puritanism meant that
Saudi Arabia would always throw up men who believe they had been
chosen to "cleanse" their society from corruption, yet Abdul
Wahhab also preached that royal rulers should not be overthrown.
Thus the Saudis were unable to confront the duality, that
protection-and-threat that Wahhabism represented for them.
Prince Bandar, formerly Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington,
once characterised his country's religion as part of a "timeless
culture" while a former British ambassador advised Westerners in
Saudi Arabia to "adapt" and "to act with the grain of Saudi
traditions and culture".
Amnesty International has appealed for hundreds of men – and
occasionally women – to be spared the Saudi executioner's blade.
They have all been beheaded, often after torture and grossly
unfair trials. Women are shot.
The ritual of chopping off heads was graphically described by an
Irish witness to a triple execution in Jeddah in 1997. "Standing
to the left of the first prisoner, and a little behind him, the
executioner focused on his quarry ... I watched as the sword was
being drawn back with the right hand. A one-handed back swing of
a golf club came to mind ... the down-swing begins ... the blade
met the neck and cut through it like ... a heavy cleaver cutting
through a melon ... a crisp moist smack. The head fell and
rolled a little. The torso slumped neatly. I see now why they
tied wrists to feet ... the brain had no time to tell the heart
to stop, and the final beat bumped a gush of blood out of the
headless torso on to the plinth."
And you can bet they won't be talking about this at Buckingham
Palace today
© 2007 Independent News and Media Limited
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