Saudi pilots are relentlessly bombing Yemen. Schools, mosques and hospitals have been destroyed. Thousands of civilians are dead. But is Britain helping the Saudis fight this war? We investigate the British officers in the Saudi operations centre and the defence contractors helping the Saudis keep their planes in the air. Dispatches: Britain’s Hidden War, Channel 4 2019
19,500 air strikes on Yemen in the last 4 years. ibid.
The arms: we sell twice as many to the Saudis as we sell to anyone else. ibid.
Jamal Khashoggi: smart, kind, and outspoken Saudi journalist. He vanished after walking into an embassy. Panorama: The Khashoggi Murder Tapes, BBC 2019
The Saudi consulate was bugged by Turkish intelligence. The planning and the execution were all recorded. ibid.
Saudi Arabia wasn’t always this repressive. Now it’s unbearable. ibid. newspaper article 2017
The fire burned for hours. The largest oil refinery in Saudi Arabia had been hit multiple times. The attack was claimed by Shia-backed Houthi rebels from the neighbouring country of Yemen. It appeared to be the latest escalation in the deadly Saudi-Yemeni war that had been raging since 2015. But all was not as it seemed. Secret Wars Uncovered s1e2: Yemen: Britain & the Saudis
Fighting in Yemen has cost the lives of thousands and triggered a humanitarian crisis. ibid.
The Unified Republic of Yemen was declared on 22 May 1990. ibid.
Early in 2015 the Houthis seized the presidential palace and dissolved parliament. ibid.
‘The Saudis have been bombing Yemen indiscriminately’ … Impossible without its [Saudis’] oldest allies in the West, the United States and the United Kingdom. ibid. David Wearing, Royal Holloway University
Saudi Arabia-UK: At stake was one of the most valuable arms deals in history. ibid.
In 2003 the Guardian printed new allegations … [arms deal] secured by corruption on a massive scale. ibid.
Why is Britain selling arms to the repressive Saudi state? ibid.
Donald Trump had authorised a special forces raid in central Yemen … What was meant to be a precision raid turned into a chaotic hour-long battle. The White House insisted the operation had been a success. ibid.
Stirling and Avery had dinner with the foreign secretary Alec Douglas Hume at White’s Club in St James’s. They proposed a plan: a group of ex-SAS men would mount an operation to fight the Egyptians but they would do it privately. Adam Curtis, The Mayfair Set I: Who Pays Wins ***** Channel 4 1999
[Prince] Faisal was terrified that Nasser would invade his county next and agreed to the British idea: the Saudis would pay for the war. ibid.
The Saudis agreed to pay for the British mercenaries but also to smuggle weapons into the Yemen. ibid.
What was invented in the Yemen was a new private form of foreign policy for Britain, paid for by other countries’ money. But then at the very moment when Stirling’s team seemed to be on the brink of success, an economic crisis hit Britain which threatened his whole concept. ibid.
[Denis] Healey believed that instead, British defence industries should make money for the country. The Americans were selling weapons throughout the world and Healey wanted Britain to compete with them and earn precious foreign currency. But Britain was not very good at selling weapons until David Stirling decided to get involved. ibid.
He [Khashoggi] told Lockheed that the only way to win the [arms] deal was to bribe the Saudi government. Ten years later in a Senate investigation Lockheed’s chairman admitted what had happened. Stirling told the British government they would have to do the same as the Americans: pay commission to their agents in King Faisal’s entourage. If they didn’t, Britain would lose the deal. In December 1965 the Saudis announced they would buy the British planes; the bribes had worked. It was the biggest export deal in Britain’s history. And King Faisal came on a state visit to celebrate it. It was also the beginning of the modern arms trade with the Middle East which has grown to dominate Britain’s economy. And from it also came a much wider commercial relationship with Saudi Arabia. ibid.
President Roosevelt travelled to the Great Bitter Lake in the middle of the Suez canal. At the same time he sent another American warship to pick up the king of Saudi Arabia, Kind Abdulaziz. The meeting of king and president was to have powerful and disastrous consequences both for the west and for a strange way for Afghanistan. Adam Curtis, Bitter Lake, BBC 2015
To keep that power America needed oil. And he wanted to forge an alliance with the King to make sure that the vast Saudi oilfields remained under American control. ibid.
And the deal made that day on the Great Bitter Lake meant that America would get its oil but it would also be protecting Wahhabism, a force that had its own global ambitions, ambitions that were very different from America’s. ibid.
But in 1966 Faisal gave America a glimpse of how uncontrollable an ally Saudi Arabia could be. He went to New York and publicly attacked America’s support for Israel. It caused an outrage. ibid.
Overnight Faisal raised the price of oil five times and threatened a complete embargo unless America forced Israel to pull back. It worked. A ceasefire was agreed. ibid.
A vast pool of wealth known as petro-dollars that could be lent and traded anywhere around the world without political control … Their bankers were building a new global financial system based on recycling the Saudi millions. And the banks began to become rich and powerful again. ibid.
Reagan’s partner in the battle to bring freedom to Afghanistan was Saudi Arabia. The Saudi intelligence agencies worked with the CIA to ship arms and money to the Afghan rebels. ibid.
The arms business kept growing. And in 1985 Mrs Thatcher announced what was going to be the biggest arms deal in history … Ever since there have been allegations that really it was secured by vast bribes to key members of the Saudi establishment. ibid.
But there was another country that was like a fairytale land: Saudi Arabia. Ever since the 1970s billions of dollars had flooded in from the West. This vast wave of money created a dream-like society run by an elite where no-one paid any tax. But there were those in Saudi Arabia who saw another much more sinister reality underneath this facade. Adam Curtis, Can’t Get You Out of My Head VI Are We a Pigeon? Or Are We Dancer? BBCiplayer 2021
Money has created a society where nobody believes in anything, and nothing can be trusted. ibid.
Emails say that no, it is the governments of Saudi and Qatar that have been funding terrorism. Julian Assange
[Dr Khalid al Jabri] ‘If you fast-forward seven years from that photo, MBS went from a marginal prince barely making it into a frame of a family photo and he becomes effectively de fact ruler of Saudi Arabia and purges all of the princes sitting down and takes all their money.’ The Kingdom: The World’s Most Powerful Prince I: Game of Thrones, BBC 2024
The rise of Mohammed bin Salman is one of the most extraordinary stories of our times. MBS, as he is known, has ruthlessly out-manoeuvred hundred of rivals to become next in line for the Saudi throne. He has already begun to transform Saudi Arabia. He has thrown open a closed society, but at the same time MBS has left behind a trail of oppression accused of suppressing free speech and authorising murder. ibid.
‘This was MBS’s decision to intervene militarily in Yemen.’ ibid. man
But MBS’s changes were provoking opposition including from within the royal court. In response he decided to suppress criticism. ibid.
One of the most powerful and divisive leaders in the world. The Kingdom: The World’s Most Powerful Prince II: Kingdom Come
In the autumn of 2017 Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS as he is known, had manoeuvred his way to become Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. ibid.
Neom: The cost of creating a city 170 kilometres long was estimated to be at least $500 billion. ibid.
Among the detainees [Ritz-Carlton] were some of MBS’s cousins. ibid.
‘The kidnapping of Hariri [Lebanon PM] was extraordinary.’ ibid.
But MBS was the Trump administration’s man. ibid.
‘The fact that they could send a hit squad to Canada two weeks after Khashoggi shows a complete lack of awareness.’ ibid. Dissident
MBS did not reduce the oil price as hoped … Biden’s trip had been a waste of time. ibid.
During the same period, in the middle of the ’90s, Saudi Arabia is facing an important surge of Sunnite extremism. The Terror Routes II: 1993-2001 The Countdown, 2011