http://socialistaction.org/coalition-to-expose-u-s-saudi-alliance/
Coalition to expose U.S.-Saudi alliance
Published April 7, 2016.
April 2016 Saudi
By MARILYN VOGT-DOWNEY
Over 260 people attended the first 2016 Summit on Saudi Arabia held in
Washington, D.C., on Saturday, March 5 and Sunday, March 6, at the
University of the District of Columbia Law School. The conference was
organized by Code Pink and a new organization, the Coalition to End the
U.S.-Saudi Alliance.
The coalition was initiated by Code Pink, The Institute for Gulf
Affairs, Massachusetts Peace Action, and the United National Anti-War
Coalition. Among at least 30 peace and social action organizations who
supported the effort were Veterans for Peace, The Nation magazine, and
United Methodist General Board of Church and Society. (Notably, the list
of supporting groups included no unions or labor groups and no socialist
organizations!)
The Coalition in its literature explains the pressing reasons for its
formation and what it plans to do: “Our mission is to show how the
U.S.-Saudi relationship is a key reason for the instability and terror
being visited upon the region by murderous sectarian groups, by
repressive governments and by U.S. and Saudi bombing campaigns, and to
break up this destructive U.S.-Saudi relationship as a step toward peace
in the area.
“Towards that end, we will expose the Saudi regime’s support for
sectarian extremist groups; its horrific human rights record; its deadly
military interventions in Bahrain and Yemen and its support for despotic
regimes, its collaboration with Israel and other countries pushing for
war with Iran; and its support for destructive U.S. military interventions.
It lists its ambitious goals:
Eliminating the U.S. military spending that is protecting the Gulf
tyrannies, including military bases, naval fleets, etc.
Ending U.S. aid to Saudi Arabia, including arms sales and training to
Saudi military or police forces.
Pushing UN sanctions against the Saudi regime for its military
aggression and war crimes in Bahrain and Yemen, its violation of basic
human rights, and its provision of material assistance to groups engaged
in indiscriminate killing of civilians.
As the goals indicate, the organizers recognize that all the Gulf
monarchies—the Gulf tyrannies—are military outposts of U.S. imperialism,
and are under the protection of the U.S. and its vast military might.
The only one of the Gulf states that does not function as a forward
operating military base for the Pentagon and U.S. imperialism is Yemen,
which the U.S. government is now bombing to oblivion with the help of
the Saudi monarchy and the support of nine of Washington’s client
regimes—Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Jordan,
Morocco, Egypt, Sudan, and Somalia.
The reasons that the coalition chose to focus on Saudi Arabia are
obvious: It is the largest Pentagon outpost among the Gulf tyrannies in
terms of population and area, and its military budget—thanks to U.S.
support to the Saudi regime—is the third largest in the world!
The purpose of the conference was to educate and organize to promote the
coalition’s goals. Toward those ends, Saturday’s tight agenda began at
9:30 a.m. and continued until 5:30 p.m., featuring seven hour-long
panels with presentations by more than 23 experts, running
consecutively, with each panelist getting 10-15 minutes to make
presentations followed by Q & A. This format—which was strictly adhered
to—provided for an information-packed day. The evening event featured a
movie called “Wajda,” made secretly in Saudi Arabia to reveal what it is
like to be a woman there, with no rights.
The information about the repression of women in this retrograde outpost
of medievalism was startling. And what is true of Saudi Arabian
“society” is also true of the other Gulf monarchies: Qatar, the United
Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Kuwait as well as Oman. They are all
autocratic religious monarchies exercising the same repression—justified
by religion—that characterizes the much-maligned ISIS, which U.S.
imperialism is bombing Syria to rubble to allegedly destroy. These
regimes allow no democratic rights: no independent media, protests,
demonstrations, public dissent, or women’s or workers’ rights. Although
there are limited instances of elected bodies, these bodies have no
power. The power lies with the monarchy—that is, with the men of the
ruling family.
Here are a few examples of points of interest reported by some of the
speakers. Regarding the conditions for women:
1) All Saudi women (and women in all the Gulf regimes) must have a male
“guardian,” whose approval is required before they can do almost
anything. Even the lease to their residence is in the name of their
“guardian.” While women won limited rights to vote and run for council
positions, proof of residency is required, which means that the male
holder of the lease where they live must give his approval; and they
must have a driver and guardian permission to go to the polls. In
addition, the councils have no authority.
2) Women are not allowed to drive. So anywhere they want to go, they
have to have a driver.
3) Women cannot protest, and even if they wanted to seek to join with
others to protest, there would be virtually no way they could establish
contact with other women who would join them. Of course, social media
has opened up some new channels for potential communication, but this
avenue is fraught with dangers.
4) If women are punished and imprisoned for violation of any of the
numerous laws restricting them, they cannot be released from prison
unless their “guardian” approves.
5) Men can abandon women at will and marry someone else at any time.
6) The fact that men have such total power over women tends to transform
ordinary males into abusive tyrants against women who are powerless to
defend themselves.
Regarding labor rights: It is important to be aware that the working
class in these Gulf states—including Saudi Arabia—are indentured
servants, foreign workers from impoverished nations to the east. These
workers also have no rights. In Saudi Arabia, these non-citizens are
roughly 8 million of the country’s 28 million population. In the other
Gulf states—Qatar and the United Arab Emirates—the percentage of
non-citizens is over 80%!
In this regard, The New York Times reported in February that the decline
in oil prices was having a negative impact on some of the Saudi
privileged citizens, who now have to compete with expatriates (that is,
non-citizens) for jobs, even though Saudi citizens still had privileged
wages. At McDonald’s in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, for
example, a foreign worker’s wage would start at $320 per month while the
wage to the Saudi citizen for the same job would be more than four times
that: $1460 per month, “part of which is subsidized by the government.”
(The New York Times, “Young Saudis See Cushy Jobs Vanish Along With
Saudi Arabia’s Oil Wealth,” Ben Hubbard, July 17, 2016.)
As repugnant as this is, it is not even half the story! Sharat G. Lin, a
scholar on Middle Eastern migrant rights who spoke on a panel on Human
Rights, has uncovered some startling documentation of institutionalized,
state-sponsored inequality and discrimination that reveals precisely who
calls the shots on the Arabian peninsula. He has found the Saudi
regime’s labor payment schedule, available only in Arabic. This labor
payment schedule defines not two but 15 categories of workers, all of
whom are in a different pay grade. They include designations such as
“Saudi Nationals,” “Arab Nationals,” and others all the way down to
cover the four million or so foreign workers from impoverished lands who
comprise the imported work gangs, that among other projects have built
all those garish structures and shopping malls for which the emirates
are notorious.
Surprisingly, we find that the highest pay scale is not the Saudis but
Europeans and U.S. citizens. This is because the pay scale was not
started by the ruling Saudi family but by the real bosses—British and
U.S. imperialists, who since the 1920s, drew the borders creating Saudi
Arabia and the other fiefdoms, put the ruling families in power, and
established the oil companies such as Aramco.
This wage schedule document drives home the fact that for all its
bluster and facade of power and wealth, Saudi Arabia, like the other
Gulf states, is an imperialist colony and that even Saudi citizens—the
“privileged” group—are second-class citizens in “their own” country.
The conference speakers included prominent figures such as Vijay
Prashad, an author and expert on the region, who addressed the
conference during the Saturday “lunch break;” Mohammed Al-Nimr, the son
of Sheikh Nimr Al-Nimr, a prominent religious leader who—along with 46
others—was executed by the Saudi dictatorship on Jan. 2, 2016, on
trumped-up charges because of his public protests for democratic and
religious rights; social activist and author Christopher Hedges, who
gave the keynote address at the closing Sunday session; and of course,
Medea Benjamin, founder of Code Pink, who addressed the conference
during the educational sessions and who kept the agenda going as scheduled.
Various work committees were established and met to initiate outreach
and education, including supporting political prisoners, stopping
weapons sales, creating an international coalition, and
tracking/countering the Saudi lobby in the U.S. The existence of the
work committee, ”Getting the 28 pages of 911 Commission report
released,” marked the first time that an antiwar coalition has
recognized that the official report of what happened on 9/11 may not be
the real story. These 28 pages of the Congressional report, suppressed
by George W. Bush in 2002, are believed to reveal the role of Saudi
money in financing some aspects of the attack. There is a bill in
Congress to get these pages declassified.
Since the conference, the coalition has been organizing and
co-sponsoring protests and press conferences across the country to
expose and condemn the year-long U.S.-Saudi-led bombing campaign against
Yemen and the war crimes being committed, with the goal of bringing an
end to both. It is also planning events to target Textron, the producer
of cluster bombs, for its role in war crimes, and to expose programs at
Ivy League schools such as Yale that accept funds from Saudi “princes.”
The formation of this coalition is a remarkable achievement and a
welcome step toward exposing to the U.S. working class—the only social
force that has the power to stop this criminal war machine—the extent to
which we are being lied to. They will learn that the “War on Terror” is
a sham, and the so-called “jihadi terrorist armies” tearing the region
apart are actually organized and funded by the Saudi Arabian monarchy
and the other regimes of these U.S. military outposts, obviously at the
behest of the Pentagon itself.
To watch and listen to all the conference speakers, and to follow the
coalition’s work and to join it, go to the coalition’s website: Saudius.org.
Photo: Obama met with Saudi Arabia’s late King Abdullah.
Posted in Anti-War, International, Middle East. | Tagged Saudi Arabia,
Yemen.
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