At Half-Mast For Our Future, Too

Mark Almond writes:

Did anyone in Britain take pride in the sight of the Prince of Wales and Prime Minister leading the mourning at the King of Saudi Arabia’s wake? Or in the spectacle of Union Flags at half-mast?

Our Establishment seems blinded by the glitter of black gold. Awed by the vast wealth that oil has brought to the desert kingdom since the 1930s, it is as if they are oblivious to the brutal fanaticism and shameless corruption that have been endemic in Saudi Arabia.

The late King Abdullah was eulogised as a reformer, liberal, even a friend of women’s rights. All the decapitations, stonings and hand-choppings were apparently somebody else’s fault.

Not everyone is so blinkered.

Saudis have funded terrorism from 9/11 in America to Islamic State (IS) today – and around the world, the Saudis’ toxic mix of religious fundamentalism and apparently limitless oil revenues is coming into proper focus.

It is true that the late king feared IS as a threat to his own regime. Yet his government had turned a blind eye to the cash doled out to IS by wealthy fundamentalists in the ruling Saudi clan until very recently.

So long as IS concentrated its fire on regimes Abdullah opposed – like Assad’s in Syria or the Shiite majority in Iraq – the Saudi king looked on benignly as his citizens exported terrorism.

It was only when the fanatics of IS extended their reach to Saudi Arabia itself, murdering, for instance, a senior general earlier this month, that Abdullah reacted to the threat against him.

Maybe the West should welcome this change of heart.

When the Saudis let Osama Bin Laden’s genie out of the bottle, they turned on him only when he bombed inside the kingdom as well as abroad, blowing up a barracks there and a US warship in neighbouring Yemen.

Equally, the king only turned against IS when it used the fundamentalist ideology of Islam promoted by the Saudi regime to accuse the Saudi royal family – quite rightly – of not living up to the strict rules imposed on everyone else.

It is precisely because of the Saudi regime’s grisly record that you sense that people across Great Britain feel our country is smaller and shabbier after seeing the Prince of Wales and David Cameron in the front row of those paying what the Saudi media called homage to the new Saudi absolute monarch.

It says a great deal about Britain’s decline and its dependence on Arab oil money.

The Saudis gained their mega-bucks in the 1970s with the dramatic spike in oil prices. It coincided with Britain’s bleak stop-go years of three-day weeks.

Ever since then, Arab money has kept the London property bubble and the arms manufacturers afloat.

We should never forget how recent the oil bonanza was and what an extraordinary transformation it has brought about in the Gulf states. Nor should we forget Britain’s role in creating them.

Ninety years ago Saudi Arabia was born. But British intelligence was the country’s midwife.

Strangely enough, Saudi Arabia was the product of the rivalry of two of the British Empire’s greatest agents.

Lawrence of Arabia suffered his worst defeat when his rival St John Philby backed Ibn Saud against the Bedouin loved by Lawrence.

Today it is his Marxist spy son, Kim, who is remembered, but Philby Sr, who became a Muslim, had the real impact on history.

Perhaps with this in mind, it is proper for the Establishment to mark the passing on of power from one son of Ibn Saud to another.

But the refusal to acknowledge the Saudis’ many failings is another matter.

Moreover, since King Abdullah’s last days were overshadowed by looming dangers, shouldn’t Whitehall be hedging its bets?

Apart from the IS threat to the north in Iraq, evidence of discontent inside the kingdom has been growing.

The sentence of a thousand lashes for a blogger who had made mild criticisms is a sign the regime feels it cannot afford to give an inch of tolerance.

Education has opened the eyes of thoughtful Saudis to the rigid and blinkered nature of their leadership.

Absurd fatwas against women driving or even building snowmen are difficult for an internet savvy generation to swallow.

But the real threat comes from the poor masses.

The average family income has fallen, despite the high price of oil from 2003 until 2014, and the population has been growing quickly as the living standard falls.

Discontent is rising.

Much of this seething dissent is found among the Shiite Muslim minority. The Saudi government fears they are loyal to Shiite Iran, the regime’s mortal rival for leadership of the Muslim world.

Worse still for the dying Abdullah was the seizure of power in neighbouring Yemen by the local Houthi Shiites.

Now Saudi Arabia’s stability is threatened north and south, as well as from the inside. A slow burn of change is under way, but will it explode?

Because of Saudi Arabia’s status as the world’s largest oil producer and the largest customer for Britain’s last major industry, weapons, along with five-star hotels and £15 million-plus properties, upheaval there would hit us.

The fall of the House of Saud may be unthinkable in Whitehall, but not in the Middle East. The Arab Spring has soured, but it has shown that no regime is immortal.

Remember how our leaders curried favour with the Shah of Iran right up until his fall in 1979.

Back then it seemed impossible that an absolute ruler, with all that oil wealth and all the Chieftain tanks Britain could sell, would be toppled by a bearded cleric and unarmed crowds.

The ghost of the Shah hovers close.

A generation ago, a sharp fall in the price of oil suddenly crippled the Shah’s ability to pay people off.

Let’s not bank on the Saudi regime staying the course if the cash flow dries up.

If the Saudi family falls, everyone in Britain will notice the thud. But Whitehall seems paralysed at the prospect.

The collapse of the Saudi regime would pull down the other Gulf oil sheiks.

That would send the price of oil soaring with desperate results for the world economy, particularly the West. As things stand, there is little we can do.

Backing repression in Saudi Arabia will only pile up the resentment against us.

Iran has shown us how our support for a corrupt regime has led to decades of popular anti-Western radicalism.

Worse, there is the prospect of Saudi Arabia plunging into Syrian-style religious and tribal war.

We must be prepared, yet even the act of preparing for a change risks alienating the Saudis with the money-bags today.

Britain is home to so much Gulf money, few of our rulers will risk thinking of the longer term.

Those Union Flags were at half-mast for our future too.

As I have just been reminded, and as I used to annoy Oliver Kamm by mentioning, in 2008 Hillary Clinton promised that, as President of the United States, she would nuke Iran if so instructed by the Saudi, Kuwaiti and Emirati donors to her campaign. She has never retracted that promise.