Rohan Pearce
The August 1 death of Saudi Arabia's King Fahd bin Abdul Aziz al Saud triggered a predictable, and nauseating, flurry of tributes from the "Coalition of the Willing" — the Iraq invasion alliance of Australia, Britain and the US.
In a statement on Fahd's death, US President George Bush said he was "deeply saddened" by the passing of "a man of wisdom and a leader who commanded respect throughout the entire world". Fahd, said Bush, was "a friend and strong ally of the United States for decades".
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Fahd had been "a good friend of the United Kingdom", adding "Our two countries have benefitted very greatly over the years from his wise advice. Under his guidance we have developed extremely close political, commercial and defence links."
In a similar vein, Australian Prime Minister John Howard expressed "deep regret" over the king's death, praising him for providing "practical support for multinational forces in the 2003 Iraq war".
This outpouring of praise for the deceased head of the Saudi absolutist monarchy epitomised the ever-present hypocrisy in relations between these crusaders for "democracy" in the Middle East and the region's pro-Western despotic regimes. As long as the Saudi royal family in firm political control of Saudi Arabia and remains in lockstep with Washington's foreign policy, particularly is "war on terror", regime change is not on the cards.
Despite the fact that Saudi Arabia was the homeland of 15 of the 19 hijackers on September 11, 2001, as well as of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, and was the prime source of funding for the 9/11 terrorist attacks, it was Iraq, a country with no connection to 9/11 whatsoever, that became the chief target of the "war on terror".
Supporting Human Rights and Democracy: The US Record 2004-2005, released by the US State Department in March, claimed progress in respect for human rights in Saudi Arabia but admitted: "The government's human rights record remained poor... the government routinely infringed upon privacy rights and continued to place some restrictions on freedom of speech and press. The government restricted freedom of assembly, association, religion and movement. Violence against women and children, discrimination against ethnic and religious minorities and strict limitations on workers' rights continued."
The report claimed that Washington "continued to address democracy and human rights concerns in Saudi Arabia by urging the government to increase political participation, transparency and accountability in government, rights for women, religious freedom and workers' rights".
These "efforts" have evidently been of dubious value given that less than two months after the report's release, a closed Riyadh court sentenced three academics to between six and nine years' imprisonment after they submitted a petition to Fahd's government calling for an elected legislature. They were charged and convicted of "rebelling against the ruler, speaking to foreign media, and incitement against the Wahhabi school of Islam", Human Rights Watch reported.
In a July 6, 2002, interview with ABC Radio National, Robert Fisk, the renowned Middle East correspondent for the British Independent, explained the attitude of the imperialist governments to democracy in the Middle East: "Egypt is a mock democracy, and Saudi Arabia is a theological monarchy oligarchy run by dictators called the 'royal family'. There's no democracy in Saudi Arabia...
"Why is it that we always want to introduce democracy to places we're either going to bomb or our allies are bombing, but we don't want democracy elsewhere?
"In, for example, the Arab world, we don't want democracy in Saudi Arabia, we don't want it in Yemen, we don't want it in Oman, we don't want it in the Emirates, we don't want it in Qatar, we certainly don't want it in Egypt or Jordan, because the people may change the governments and not do what we want. But again, you see, 'democracy' is used as a blind."
No-one should mourn Fahd. Instead mourn the fact that, in our name, imperialist governments are continuing to prop up corrupt and brutal despots in a region that has already had more than its fair share of suffering.
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, August 10, 2005.
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