I wonder what was going through
David Cameron's mind as he cleared his diary to rush off to the funeral of King
Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. (I'm not too bothered about what went through Prince
Charles's mind -- going to foreign funerals is what he's paid for.)
By most people's standards, the Saudi
monarch was a brutal tyrant. Or, if we're feeling generous, he presided over a
tyrannical regime. If he was, as so many commentators insisted, a reformer at
heart, he was a remarkably unsuccessful one.
I understand the need for
diplomatic niceties to be observed. That's why when a royal head of state dies,
I'm perfectly happy for one of our royals to attend the funeral. But why on
earth do we have to send the prime minister as well?
Perhaps you think it's because we
still need their oil. Well, no, in fact -- only 4 per cent of the UK's imported
oil comes from Saudi Arabia -- most of it comes from Norway (42 per cent),
Algeria (14 per cent) and Nigeria (13 per cent).
No. The real answer is that the
Saudis buy obscene quantities of UK armaments. So British policy towards Saudi
Arabia can best be represented by a single symbol: a great big dollar
sign. Moreover, in a region that
becomes ever more violent and unstable (Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Egypt, Libya, Lebanon),
Saudi Arabia appears -- repeat appears -- to be a rare island of relative tranquillity.
These days, for Western leaders worried about where the next jihadi outrage
will strike, that's worth a lot.
It is also woefully short-sighted.
Because the truth is that the motivating ideology that infects the jihadi killers
on the streets of Europe's capitals comes directly from the very same city
where Mr Cameron, Prince Charles and the rest of them congregated to pay their
respects to the departed Saudi monarch.
My heart sinks as I write the
word "respects". Respects to an absolute monarch in a kingdom that
publicly beheads miscreants, publicly flogs bloggers, and still forbids women
from driving or travelling without the permission of a male guardian? Does
realpolitik know no boundaries at all? Would they genuflect to Kim Jong-un of
North Korea as well if he bought enough of our weapons?
There are nearly as many strands
in Islam as there are in Christianity. Most of them pose no greater threat to
non-Muslims than the Quakers do to non-Christians. But it is the world's great
misfortune that the strand espoused by the richest and most reactionary rulers
in the Muslim world is also the most ruthlessly exported. Visit almost any
country on earth where there are Muslims and there you will find mosques built
and financed by Saudi cash.
These days, the Saudis profess to
be as worried about jihadi murderers as everyone else, but whether that anxiety
is matched by effective action against the propagandists, financiers and others
who back the most extreme elements in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere remains open to
doubt.
What is not in doubt is that the
Saudi royals are deeply concerned at the spread of Iranian-backed Shi'ism in
the region -- and even more concerned at the prospect of Iran finally doing a
deal over its nuclear research programme and being re-admitted into what we
fondly refer to as the "international community". The Saudis have
always regarded themselves as the rightful rulers of the whole of the Islamic
world; after all, their country is where the prophet Mohammad was born and
lived, and where their religion was created. Iran, and Shi'ism, which Saudi
clerics regard much as Pope Leo X regarded Martin Luther in the 16th century, threaten
Saudi hegemony.
President Obama, who was
accompanied in Riyadh by Mrs Obama and a host of US dignatories, wants to keep
the Saudis onside. No one in Washington has forgotten, or will ever forget,
that 15 of the 19 hijackers on 11 September 2001 came from Saudi Arabia.
And if you've been following the
entirely specious "row" over why Mrs Obama didn't cover her head
during their visit (a wonderful demonstration of feminist courage, according to
her supporters; a disgraceful demonstration of disrespect to a key ally,
according to her Republican critics), you may be interested to know that she
was in good company. On previous visits to the desert kingdom, former First
Lady Laura Bush, ex-secretary of state Hillary Clinton, and German chancellor
Angela Merkel have all appeared bare-headed.
I've even come across a
30-year-old photo of then prime minister Margaret Thatcher, also bare-headed on
a visit to Saudi. And she wasn't exactly one of the world's most outspoken
feminists, or one to disrespect a valued ally, especially as it was she who
signed the UK's most lucrative arms contract ever with the Saudis: the
al-Yamamah deal, worth something like £40 billion to the British defence firm
BAE.
The Saudi royal family are not
the kind of people we should be doing business with. The only reason to stay on
speaking terms with them is that if they are overthrown, they could well be
followed by something even worse.
Still, wouldn't it be nice if,
like Germany, we could halt our arms sales to what is undoubtedly one of the
nastiest regimes on the planet. And when the new king dies -- he's already 79
-- perhaps we could send Prince Charles on his own. I'm sure he'd manage just
fine.