Vol. 15 No. 8 · 22 April 1993
pages 6-8 | 5955 words
Saudis break the silence
Helga Graham
Saudi Arabia – America’s principal ally in the Middle East, the vital link between the West and its oil supplies – appears to be sliding steadily towards disaster. This can’t, of course, be said in Saudi Arabia but a number of Saudis have travelled out of their country in order to be able to speak of it in safety.
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Letters
Vol. 15 No. 11 · 10 June 1993
From H.StJ.B. Armitage
I find it sad that such an accomplished writer as Helga Graham should indulge in few hard facts, but much stale fiction and warm gossip (LRB, 22 April). She tells us nothing which a Western visitor with reasonably good Saudi contacts does not hear and cannot discuss when visiting Saudi Arabia. Her renderings of familiar fiction and gossip are variations of themes common in expatriate society in Saudi Arabia and the Arabic scandal sheets published in London.
Her misleading views on the Succession and the Armed Forces are, perhaps, not surprising. But she also repeats old myths, embellishing some, and inventing new ones: ‘women and children shot in front of open graves’, ‘tortured by being buried in burning sand’ etc. She demonstrates ignorance of the Al Saud family by describing the Governor of the Eastern Province (a son) and the commander of the key base of Tabuk (a nephew) as being full brothers of King Fahd! Her direct quotation of Article 39 – on freedom of expression – is inaccurate and incomplete. She attributes qualities to three ‘new religious intellectuals’ (two of whom she misnames), presumably because their names have been reported by Human Rights Watch and in other media. But to suggest that they are ‘most alarming to the Government’ is to misjudge the nature of the potential threat which is miscalled ‘fundamentalist’.
The specific quotations from her discussions with a Saudi banker, a member of King Fahd’s entourage, a Madina doctor and a senior Saudi are interesting, but they are brief and waste away in the bulk of her article which is a re-hash of previous general rumour and report. As for the opinion of the ‘old British Saudi hand’, I would suggest that he might not be old but merely living in the past to state that ‘Bedouin evangelical fervour is only sporadically aroused and even then plunder and paradise seem to merge in their minds.’
H.StJ.B. Armitage
Wells, Somerset
Vol. 15 No. 13 · 8 July 1993
From Helga Graham
Mr Armitage’s letter on my Saudi Arabian article (Letters, 10 June) was predictably irascible, coming as it did from a sympathiser with the Saudi Government. The Armitage line is that the piece was nothing but uninformed rumour-mongering. If that were so, would the Saudi Minister of Information have telephoned Lebanon’s Prime Minister Hariri in an attempt to prevent the Lebanese newspaper As Safir from continuing to serialise the article? (To As Safir’s eternal credit, the editor changed the name of the paper with Levantine aplomb and sallied on!) If the article was so insubstantial, would the Minister of Information have launched such a bitter attack against it on Saudi television and warned Arab journalists off? Indeed, would Mr Armitage himself have troubled to vent half a column of bad temper if the information in it were as unimportant as he claims?
Helga Graham
London SW11
