"Abu
Henry" And The Mysterious Silence
By Robert Fisk
02 July, 2007
The Independent
"Abu
Henry" says we may have to remain in Afghanistan for decades to
protect Afghans from the Taliban. Our ambassador in Kabul--Sir Sherard
Cowper-Coles, KCMG, LVO, to be precise--apparently sees no contradiction
in this extraordinary prediction.
The Taliban are themselves
mostly Afghans, and the idea that the British Army is in Afghanistan
to protect the locals from each other is a truly colonial proposition.
It's what we said about the Northern Irish in 1969. Anyway, I thought
we destroyed the Taliban in 2001. Wasn't that the idea at the time?
Isn't that what Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara, our new man in the Middle
East--who will grace us with his first visit next month--said back then?
Abu Henry--and I am indebted
to one of the Saudi government's house magazines for telling me that
this is how he "is affectionately called by his Saudi friends"--left
Riyadh in some haste, a "surprise" as he put it, since he
expected to spend another year there. And presumably, he has not been
able to take the Cowper-Coles family's pet falcons--Nour and Alwaleed--with
him to Kabul. But before he left, Abu Henry had some warm praise for
the notoriously third-rate intelligence services in the kingdom. "I've
been hugely impressed by the way in which the Saudi Arabian authorities
have tackled and contained what was (sic) a serious terrorist threat,"
he announced. "They've shrunk the pool of support for terrorism
... "
No word, of course, of the
Saudis' habit of chopping off the heads of "criminals" after
grotesquely unfair trials. In an unprecedented year for executions,
the kingdom's swordsmen--the job is sometimes passed on father to son
as was once the case in Britain--managed to hack off 100 heads by the
middle of this month. But then again, you'd have to avoid any such references
when British investment in Saudi Arabia is worth at least £6b.
That, no doubt, is one reason why Abu Henry boasted to his Saudi friends--according
to the same government magazine--that in Riyadh "we've been proud
of our visa policy, where 95 per cent of Saudis applying for a visa
before 9am on a workday obtain their visas by 2pm the same working day".
Phew. Now that is something. The Saudis, you may remember, provided
14 of the 19 killers of 11 September, 2001; quite a record for a little
kingdom, and one which in other circumstances--had the murderers been
from Chad, say, or Mali--would not have been rewarde
d with quite so generous a visa policy.
And no word from Abu Henry,
of course, about that other little matter of the alleged bribery of
Saudi officials by the British BAE Systems arms group. Here, however,
there is much more to say--courtesy, I admit at once, of a delightfully
written article by Michael Peel in the Financial Times last February.
In the paper, Peel describes how Robert Wardle, director of the Serious
Fraud Office, had "much to ponder" after three London meetings
with Cowper-Coles, "Britain's urbane ambassador to Saudi Arabia".
Mr Wardle, it seems, was "coming around to the view" that
he might have to scrap his enquiry since it could damage "national
security". Wardle told Peel that "the matter was difficult
and really I found it very helpful to have, as it were, the ambassador
flesh out the position. It helped my understanding of the risks and
very much helped me to make my decision to discontinue the investigation".
Abu Henry, it seems, "told
how the probe might cause Riyadh to cancel security and intelligence
co-operation, potentially depriving London of access to vital surveillance
of terror suspects during the haj pilgrimage to Mecca... The ambassador
had even suggested (that) persisting with the SFO probe could endanger
lives in Britain". According to a person "closely involved
in the events", wrote Peel--and I suspect the "person"
was probably Wardle--Cowper-Coles "didn't overelaborate, but he
spelt out in very clear terms, in specifics, what he believed the consequences
would be ... including that people could die". Two days later,
the bribery investigation was scrapped.
So no wonder the Saudis affectionately
called him "Abu Henry".
Given some of his remarks
during a recent visit to Oxford, however, Abu Henry must himself have
been surprised that he could persuade Lord Blair of the wisdom of dumping
that all-important bribery investigation. Among academics, he did not
hide his cynicism of our former prime minister, complaining that despite
exhaustive Foreign Office briefing notes and proposed speeches, Blair
scarcely seemed to read them and sometimes used only a single line from
their contents.
But then again, I guess that's
what diplomacy is all about, persuading here, pleading there, trying
to get what you want by a few off-the-record comments to officials of
the Serious Fraud Office, even to journalists I have no doubt.
Indeed, I remember way back
in the late 1970s--when I was Middle East correspondent for The London
Times--how a British diplomat in Cairo tried to persuade me to fire
my local "stringer", an Egyptian Coptic woman who also worked
as a correspondent for the Associated Press and who provided a competent
coverage of the country when I was in Beirut. "She isn't much good,"
he said, and suggested I hire a young Englishwoman whom he knew and
who--so I later heard--had close contacts in the Foreign Office.
I refused this spooky proposal.
Indeed, I told The Times that I thought it was outrageous that a British
diplomat should have tried to engineer the sacking of our part-timer
in Cairo. The Times's foreign editor agreed.
But it just shows what diplomats
can get up to.
And the name of that young
British diplomat in Cairo back in the late 1970s? Why, Sherard Cowper-Coles,
of course.
Leave
A Comment
&
Share Your Insights
Comment
Policy
Digg
it! And spread the word!
Here is a unique chance to help this article to be read by thousands
of people more. You just Digg it, and it will appear in the home page
of Digg.com and thousands more will read it. Digg is nothing but an
vote, the article with most votes will go to the top of the page. So,
as you read just give a digg and help thousands more to read this article.