Britain’s barbaric ‘special relationship’ with Arab dictators

Britain’s barbaric ‘special relationship’ with Arab dictators
27 August, 2012 – By Finian Cunningham – PressTV

While the majority of Bahrainis struggle with poverty, discrimination in the labour market, unemployment, ill health and squalid housing, the Al Khalifa clan lives in luxurious palaces on confiscated lands, enriched through rampant business corruption, under-the-table deals with foreign banks and investors, and, of course, embezzlement of the island’s oil industry.”

The image of British Prime Minister David Cameron greeting Bahrain’s King Hamad on the steps of 10 Downing Street last week conveys a subtle message of Britain’s presumption of global superiority. It also betrays the real role of Britain’s rulers in the suppression of democracy and human rights around the world.

The taller Cameron, in dapper pinstripe suit, is seen extending a benevolent hand to the dumpy little Arab tin-pot king who is donning a medieval-looking headdress and robe.

It would appear, from the photo-op, that patronage is being afforded by a thoroughly democratic leader to an antiquated ally from the Arabian desert, the latter in need of jolly-good-old Anglo-Saxon tutelage in the art of modern statecraft.

How civilized. The British premier invites the Bahraini monarch into the iconic dwelling near the supposed “mother of all parliaments” for a serving of English tea and cakes over “low-key talks”.

On the agenda, according to one of Britain’s “liberal” newspapers, the Guardian, the prime minister raised, apparently, the troubling matter of human rights as well as – and this is the unmentioned significant bit – trade opportunities for British businesses in the Persian Gulf kingdom.

It is a scintillating scenario of British conceit and pretence of decency. We are thus inculcated with the impression that Britain is the epitome of refined democracy. Cameron, you see, is enquiring of business opportunities while also doughtily expressing to his Al Khalifa Arab guest concerns over human rights. The British rulers, you see, are not just wrangling for a quick pound. Oh no, they have ethics and principles to defend and uphold as well.

Commenting on the meeting, Bahrain’s foreign minister Shaikh Khalid Al Khalifa (a relation of the king – as is the whole government of that kingdom) said another subject on the agenda was “regional stability”. (In that disclosure, Shaikh Khalid let the cat out of the bag, but more on that later.)

Let’s cut through the woolly British media reportage that serves to reinforce, subliminally, a self-styled sense of civilised greatness. The truth is that the British government does not give two figs about human rights in the oil shaikhdom of Bahrain. It never had any concern and it still doesn’t. By reporting that Cameron raised the issue of human rights with King Hamad, the British media are indulging in conceit that there is genuine concern about the matter among its political establishment. But history shows that to this day, human rights in Bahrain (and elsewhere) are frankly anathema to Britain’s geopolitical interests.

The absolute Al Khalifa monarchy was installed in Bahrain by the British Empire more than 200 years ago. The so-called royal rulers of Bahrain were then nothing more than a tribe of Bedouins elevated by British military force to positions of lordly privilege in Bahrain. The Al Khalifas were, to put it plainly, barbaric impostors who were fortified on their new island abode to safeguard British trading interests in the Persian Gulf en route to imperial India. It was a typical British quid pro quo. The Al Khalifa cut-throats got a throne to sit on, underpinned with “Protectorate” status, while the ever-so polite British got to rule the waves.

The Sunni Al Khalifa band of brigands was imposed against the will or consent of the indigenous Shia population of Bahrain. To this day, that is the crux of the grievance among the Bahraini majority. The Al Khalifas enriched themselves by exploiting the people from their British-protected palaces. Older people in Bahrain will tell you about the times when the Al Khalifas would send their thugs into the villages to collect taxes and tributes from the farmers and fishermen on pain of death. The young shaikhs would also drive into hamlets and take any young female that they desired for their gratification.

Such crude suzerainty may not be quite as brazen today. Today, Bahrainis are exploited and raped in more insidious ways through rigged elections and ring-fencing of the economy to satisfy the Al Khalifa rulers. While the majority of Bahrainis struggle with poverty, discrimination in the labour market, unemployment, ill health and squalid housing, the Al Khalifa clan lives in luxurious palaces on confiscated lands, enriched through rampant business corruption, under-the-table deals with foreign banks and investors, and, of course, embezzlement of the island’s oil industry.

Bahrainis have consistently protested this British imposition of despotic monarchy. They want an elected government to run the island’s oil wealth democratically, for the wellbeing of the populace, not for the crony aggrandisement of the Al Khalifa dynasty and its entourage of hangers-on. This is a basic democratic demand, a fundamental human right. Yet how could such a distortion of natural justice be sustained? Enter the British government, and in recent decades, the American too.

Down through the decades when the indigenous Bahrainis – Shia as well as Sunni – would regularly rise up against their Al Khalifa overlords, it was the British government and its military might that safeguarded the position of monarchy. In the 1950s and 60s, British troops stationed on the island opened fire on striking oil workers.

When Bahrain was finally granted nominal independence in 1971, the British may have officially left by the front door, but they came back in through the back window, as one old Bahraini memorably described it. The state security apparatus was – and continues to be – overseen by British military intelligence. It is one of the most brutal security apparatuses in the world. A notorious founding figure was Colonel Ian Henderson who was the head of the kingdom’s national security agency from 1968 to 1998. Henderson oversaw the administration of unrelenting vicious repression, during which thousands of Bahrainis deemed to be a security threat were detained without trial and tortured often at the hands of Henderson himself. …more