Gun-runners and hostages

Western Europe and North America have become increasingly dependent on the sale of arms to balance their foreign trade. And most of their best customers are in the oil-rich Middle East. This has been helped by the fact that the region has been an almost continual war zone for the past forty years. Most of this fighting has been done and paid for by foreign powers, the US, the UK, France, Russia and Turkey. But, for the past four years, a local coalition led by Saudi Arabia has been warring in Yemen and has blockaded Qatar for the past two years. However, no member of the coalition has an arms industry, so all their weapons and munitions must be imported from abroad. And all the arms producing nations have been jostling to supply them. But the war has been brutal, with indiscriminate aerial bombing of civilians and busloads of children. It has also resulted in about half of Yemen’s population having nothing to eat. Not to mention its wanton destruction of homes and infrastructure. Corporate media tried to ignore what was going on, but social media publicised it, and voices were raised to criticise the gun-running governments. But Yemen is far away from everything, and the situation has been blurred by real or presumed Islamic radicalism and sectarianism. Then came the gruesome assassination of Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. This trivial event, compared to the massacres in Yemen, turned out to be a sort of “Murder in the Cathedral”, with unpredicted and unwanted consequences. Khashoggi had been a respected journalist and the press became quite outspoken. Almost overnight, Saudi Arabia’s effective ruler, Mohamed bin Salman, acquired pariah status, and there was a backwash on the situation in Yemen. The critics became an outcry. Merkel decided to stop supplying arms to the Saudi coalition (Germany had the smallest stake). Macron has dithered and avoided (France has a large stake). Trump has declared that all signed contracts would be respected (the US has a huge stake). May is walking a tightrope over Brexit and is wary of any other divisive subject (Britain has a big stake). But, lo and behold, a British academic accused on trumped up charges of spying for Britain in the United Emirates has just been condemned to life imprisonment. The United Emirates are the Saudi’s most prominent ally, and there are several thousand British subjects living and working there. The life condemnation of Matthew Hedges is a threat hanging over the heads of all that community. They have all become hostages. Meanwhile, the haggling over Hedges release will ensure the continued delivery of military ordnance. Incidentally, this shows that presidential regimes have a free hand in the military domain, whereas parliamentary regimes need a majority on just about everything, and that some government executives more than others have to make allowance for public opinion.