Arab world bids farewell to Queen Elizabeth II, an unwavering friend

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Arab world mourns the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, an unwavering ally of the region throughout her 70-year reign. (AFP)
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Updated 09 September 2022
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Arab world bids farewell to Queen Elizabeth II, an unwavering friend

  • For the region, death marks not only the passing of a monarch but also an enduring ally
  • During her 70-year reign, there were no fewer than four state visits to Britain by Saudi monarchs

LONDON: The Arab world is mourning the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain, an unwavering friend of the region and its people throughout the seven decades of her reign.

Only three months ago, Her Majesty celebrated her platinum jubilee, marking the 70th anniversary of her accession to the throne.

In June, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman wished her “sincere felicitations and best health and happiness,” as they joined other heads of state from across the region in sending messages of congratulations on the occasion of her jubilee.

Now, they have the sad task of sending their sincerest condolences to the British royal family and the people of the UK.




King Abdullah with the Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh durng the visit of the Saudi king. (AFP/File Photo)

For many of the ruling families throughout the Middle East, the death of the Queen marks not only the passing of a fellow monarch but also a friend, and a sad end to a history of friendship that dates back to the earliest days of her reign.

That reign began on Feb. 6, 1952, the day her father, King George VI, died at Sandringham House in Norfolk while the 25-year-old Elizabeth and her husband, Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, were in Kenya during a tour of Africa.

Having left England as a princess, the king’s daughter flew home in mourning as Queen Elizabeth II. Her coronation took place in Westminster Abbey on June 2 the following year, 1953.

Among the guests at the ceremony were members of four royal families from the Gulf: The rulers, or their representatives, of what were then the British protectorates of Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar, and Prince Fahd bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, representing the 78-year-old King Abdulaziz, Saudi Arabia’s founder and first king, who had only five months left to live.




The Queen meeting with King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. (AFP/File Photos)

The bonds between the British and Saudi monarchies cannot be measured by the frequency of formal occasions alone, although an examination of the history of state visits hosted by Buckingham Palace reveals an illuminating distinction.

During the Queen's reign there were no fewer than four official visits to Britain by Saudi heads of state — a number equaled by only four other countries in the world, including the UK’s near-neighbors, France and Germany.

The first Saudi monarch to travel to London was King Faisal, who was greeted with all the pomp and ceremony of a full British state welcome at the start of his eight-day visit in May 1967.

Met by Her Majesty, other members of the British royal family and leading politicians, including Prime Minister Harold Wilson, the king rode to Buckingham Palace with the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh in an open, horse-drawn state carriage that trundled through London streets lined with cheering crowds.

During a busy schedule, the king found time to visit and pray at London’s Islamic Cultural Centre. His son, Prince Bandar, who that year graduated from the Royal Air Force College Cranwell, in Lincolnshire, deputized for his father during a visit to inspect English Electric Lightning fighter jets being readied for shipment to Saudi Arabia.

The prince would later fly those Lightning fighter jets as a pilot in the Royal Saudi Air Force.

King Faisal’s successors followed in his footsteps with their own state visits to the UK: King Khalid in 1981, King Fahd in 1987 and King Abdullah in 2007.

Other monarchs from the region also paid formal visits to the Queen over the years. The first was King Faisal II, the last king of Iraq, who visited Britain in July 1956. Two years later, he and his wife and other members of the royal family were assassinated during the coup d’etat that established Iraq as a republic.

In 1966, Her Majesty hosted King Hussein of Jordan and his British-born wife, Toni Avril Gardiner, who upon her marriage changed her name to Princess Muna Al-Hussein.




Britain's Queen Elizabeth II with then-Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, and meets with UAE vice president and Ruler of Dubai Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum. (AFP/File Photos)

Other state visits followed from the heads of state of Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE, Egypt and Kuwait.

The Queen, meanwhile, visited the Middle East on several occasions. In February 1979, she flew to the region on the supersonic jet Concorde and visited Riyadh and Dhahran during a Gulf tour that also took her to Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE and Oman.

In Saudi Arabia she was hosted by King Khalid and enjoyed a series of events including a desert picnic and a state dinner at Maathar Palace in Riyadh. In return, the Queen and Prince Philip hosted a dinner for the Saudi royal family on board Her Majesty’s Yacht Britannia.

Poignantly, Britannia would return to the Gulf only one more time, in January 1997 during its final tour before the yacht was decommissioned in December that year.

In 2010, the Queen returned to the region to meet Sheikh Khalifa, ruler of the UAE, and Sultan Qaboos of Oman.

However, the relationships between the British royal family and its counterparts in the Gulf have not been limited to great, formal occasions of state. Analysis of the regular Court Circular published by Buckingham Palace reveals that members of the royal family met Gulf monarchs or members of their families more than 200 times between 2011 and 2021 alone. Forty of these informal meetings were with members of the House of Saud.




King Khalid of Saudia Arabia welcomed at Victoria Station by Queen Elizabeth in 1981. (Alamy)

The frequency of these meetings with heads of state from the Middle East, equivalent to almost one a fortnight, serve as evidence of the strong bonds of friendship that existed between Her Majesty and the region.

One such meeting took place in March 2018, when Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had a private audience and lunch with the queen at Buckingham Palace. Later, he dined with the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge at Clarence House, during a visit to the UK that included meetings with the then British Prime Minister Theresa May and her foreign secretary, Boris Johnson.

Serious matters, such as trade and defense agreements, are often the topics of discussion during such meetings. But good-natured fun, rather than rigid formality, has been the hallmark of private gatherings between the royal families, as Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, the British ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 2003 to 2006, would later recall.

In 2003, for example, Crown Prince Abdullah, Saudi Arabia’s future king, was a guest of the Queen at Balmoral Castle, her estate in Scotland. It was the prince’s first visit to Balmoral and, happily accepting an invitation for a tour of the large estate, he climbed into the passenger seat of a Land Rover, only to discover that his driver and guide was none other than the Queen herself.




In 2010, the Queen returned to the region and met with Sultan Qaboos of Oman. (AFP)

Her Majesty, who served during the Second World War as an army driver, always drove herself at Balmoral, where the locals were used to seeing her out and about behind the wheel of one of her beloved Land Rovers. She was also known for having great fun, at the expense of her guests, as she hurtled along narrow country lanes and across the estate’s rugged terrain.

According to Sir Sherard’s account, Prince Abdullah took the impromptu roller coaster ride well — although at one point, “through his interpreter,” the crown prince felt obliged to “implore the Queen to slow down and concentrate on the road ahead.”

Aside from the commonality of their royal status, the Queen and the monarchs of the Gulf bonded over their mutual love of horses, a shared interest that dated back to at least 1937 when Elizabeth was an 11-year-old princess.

To mark the occasion of the coronation of her father that year, King Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia, presented King George VI with an Arabian mare. A life-size bronze statue of the horse, Turfa, was unveiled in 2020 at the Arabian Horse Museum in Diriyah. At the time, Richard Oppenheim, then the UK’s deputy ambassador to the Kingdom, told how the two royal families have always shared this common interest.




Clockwise from Left: Queen Elizabeth with Emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah; meeting Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani; with the King Abdullah II and Queen Rania of Jordan. (AFP/File Photos)

“The Queen has many horses, and King Salman and the Saudi royal family also have a long-held love of horses,” he said.

The Queen also shared this appreciation of horses with Sheikh Mohammed Al-Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai and vice-president of the UAE, who owns the internationally renowned Godolphin horse-racing stables and stud in Newmarket, the home of British horse racing.

The two were often seen together at great events on the horse-racing calendar, such as the annual five-day Royal Ascot meeting, regarded as the jewel in the crown of the British social season. Team Godolphin has had several winners at Royal Ascot, and the Queen’s horses have won more than 70 races there since her coronation.

This year, 10 of the Queen’s horses ran at Ascot. However, suffering increasingly with mobility problems, she did not attend the event. It was the first time she had missed it in her 70-year reign.

No fewer than 16 British prime ministers served under the Queen. When she ascended the throne in 1952, Winston Churchill, the revered wartime leader, was prime minister. His successor, Anthony Eden, appointed by the Queen in 1955, was the first of 15 who would receive her official blessing at Buckingham Palace.




Queen Elizabeth - 1926-2022. (Supplied/Royal Family)

The Queen broke with this tradition only once, and only at the very end of her reign. Increasingly frail, she was advised by her doctors not to travel to London from her Scottish home, Balmoral, and so it was there, on Tuesday this week, that she met Liz Truss, the newly appointed leader of the Conservative party, and asked her to form a government.

It was to be the final formal duty of her long reign.

During the jubilee weekend in June, flags flew from homes and public buildings across the UK and the wider Commonwealth of 150 million people, thousands of street parties were held, beacons were lit across the country and British voices everywhere sang the national anthem.

Today, as the flags fly at half-mast and the royal baton is passed to the Queen’s eldest son, Charles, the British people, after 70 years of singing the words “God Save The Queen,” must now learn to once again sing “God Save The King.”

On her 21st birthday, in a speech broadcast on the radio from Cape Town while she was still Princess Elizabeth, the future Queen made a solemn pledge.

“I declare before you all,” she said, “that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service.”

Her life, thankfully, was long. Her devotion to her duty was complete.

 


Pentagon watchdog to review Hegseth’s use of Signal app to convey plans for Houthi strike

Updated 5 sec ago
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Pentagon watchdog to review Hegseth’s use of Signal app to convey plans for Houthi strike

  • Hegseth and other members of the Trump administration are required by law to archive their official conversations

WASHINGTON: The Pentagon’s acting inspector general announced Thursday that he would review Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s use of the Signal messaging app to convey plans for a military strike against Houthi militants in Yemen.
The review will also look at other defense officials’ use of the publicly available encrypted app, which is not able to handle classified material and is not part of the Defense Department’s secure communications network.
Hegseth’s use of the app came to light when a journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, was inadvertently added to a Signal text chain by national security adviser Mike Waltz. The chain included Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and others, brought together to discuss March 15 military operations against the Iran-backed Houthis.
“The objective of this evaluation is to determine the extent to which the Secretary of Defense and other DoD personnel complied with DoD policies and procedures for the use of a commercial messaging application for official business,” the acting inspector general, Steven Stebbins, said in a notification letter to Hegseth.
The letter also said his office “will review compliance with classification and records retention requirements.”
Hegseth and other members of the Trump administration are required by law to archive their official conversations, and it is not clear if copies of the discussions were forwarded to an official email so they could be permanently captured for federal records keeping.
The Pentagon referred all questions to the inspector general’s office, citing the ongoing investigation.
President Donald Trump grew frustrated when asked about the review.
“You’re bringing that up again,” Trump scoffed at a reporter. “Don’t bring that up again. Your editors probably — that’s such a wasted story.”
In the chain, Hegseth provided the exact timings of warplane launches and when bombs would drop — before the men and women carrying out those attacks on behalf of the United States were airborne.
The review was launched at the request of Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Mississippi, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, the committee’s top Democrat.
In congressional hearings, Democratic lawmakers have expressed concern about the use of Signal and pressed military officers on whether they would find it appropriate to use the commercial app to discuss military operations.
Both current and former military officials have said the level of detail Hegseth shared on Signal most likely would have been classified. The Trump administration has insisted no classified information was shared.
Waltz is fighting back against calls for his ouster and, so far, Trump has said he stands by his national security adviser.
On Thursday, Trump fired several members of Waltz’s staff after far-right activist Laura Loomer urged the president to purge staffers she deemed insufficiently loyal to his “Make America Great Again” agenda, several people familiar with the matter said.
In his Senate confirmation hearing Tuesday, Trump’s nominee for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Lt. Gen. Dan Caine, would not say whether the officials should have used a more secure communications system to discuss the attack plans.
“What I will say is we should always preserve the element of surprise,” Caine told senators.


Putin envoy says diplomatic solution possible but differences remain after US talks

Updated 28 min 9 sec ago
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Putin envoy says diplomatic solution possible but differences remain after US talks

WASHINGTON: A senior Russian envoy on Thursday said differences remain between the US and Russia but a diplomatic solution to bring an end to the war in Ukraine is possible.
“I think (with) the Trump administration, we are now in realm of thinking about what is possible, what can really work, and how we can find a long term solution,” Kirill Dmitriev, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s investment envoy, told CNN following talks with US President Donald Trump’s administration in Washington.


US Senate Republican pushes for congressional approval of president’s tariffs

Updated 54 min 56 sec ago
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US Senate Republican pushes for congressional approval of president’s tariffs

  • The Republican critics in Congress of Trump’s tariff moves remained a distinct minority

WASHINGTON: Republican US Senator Chuck Grassley introduced a bill on Thursday that would require congressional approval for new tariffs, the day after President Donald Trump unveiled sweeping new taxes on a vast array of imported goods.
Grassley, whose home state of Iowa relies heavily on the global agricultural trade, joined Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington for the “Trade Review Act of 2025” which would require Congress to sign off on new tariffs within 60 days of their imposition or automatically block their enforcement. The move, made the day after four other Senate Republicans voted for a measure that would lift Trump’s tariffs on Canadian goods, was the latest sign of dissent among Republicans as Trump’s aggressive moves fanned recessionary fears and sparked Wall Street’s worst day since 2022.
Neither Grassley’s bill nor the measure that passed the Senate on Wednesday were seen as likely to become law while Trump’s Republicans hold majorities in both the Senate and House of Representatives, where many of their members are voicing support for Trump’s moves.
Trump, who has long advocated for tariffs, said that the highest US trade barriers in more than a century would both raise federal revenue and drive manufacturing back to the US Economists have voiced deep skepticism about both possibilities.
Grassley, the longest-serving member of the US Senate, did not directly criticize Trump in introducing his bill. He noted that he had proposed a similar trade approach during Trump’s first administration, citing the US Constitution establishing congressional authority over trade issues, but that over time the legislature has ceded this power to the executive branch.
But some Republicans have indicated unease with parts of Trump’s tariff plans.
“I would have expected more targeted tariffs to meet the needs of where countries are taking advantage of us, and perhaps a more modest approach in the amounts,” Republican Senator Jerry Moran told reporters. He also expressed concerns that tariffs placed on US allies in Southeast Asia were similar to those placed on China, which he called a “damaging” economy to the US
Republican Senator James Lankford said he was surprised by the 17 percent tariff on Israel and hoped the US Trade Representative could explain why the tariff level on Israel was different from other countries. Republican senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell — the chamber’s former Republican leader — provided the votes on Wednesday to pass Democratic Senator Tim Kaine’s disapproval resolution on the Trump trade approach toward Canada.
“Tariffs drive up the cost of goods and services. They are a tax on everyday working Americans,” McConnell said in a statement on Thursday.
About half of Americans, and one in five Republicans, believe that increasing tariffs on imports will do more harm than good, a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Wednesday found. The Republican critics in Congress of Trump’s tariff moves remained a distinct minority. Indeed, the House earlier this month passed a measure meant to strip Congress’ power to challenge new tariffs imposed by the president.
“The president has been talking about unfair trade against the United States for 40 years, so he’s been very consistent on this,” said Senator John Barrasso, the chamber’s No. 2 Republican. “Long-term, I think this is very important for the country, bringing jobs and manufacturing back to America, focusing on our economy.”
Grassley’s Democratic co-sponsor, Cantwell, said that Trump’s tariffs risked long-term damage to the US economy.
“We can’t afford a trade war that lasts for two or three years, leaving our product off the shelves,” Cantwell said. “We cannot have arbitrary policies that create chaos and uncertainty.”


Gaza heritage and destruction on display in Paris

Updated 04 April 2025
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Gaza heritage and destruction on display in Paris

  • Bouffard said the damage to the known sites as well as treasures potentially hidden in unexplored Palestinian land “depends on the bomb tonnage and their impact on the surface and underground”

PARIS: A new exhibition opening in Paris on Friday showcases archaeological artifacts from Gaza, once a major commercial crossroads between Asia and Africa, whose heritage has been ravaged by Israel’s ongoing onslaught.
Around a hundred artifacts, including a 4,000-year-old bowl, a sixth-century mosaic from a Byzantine church and a Greek-inspired statue of Aphrodite, are on display at the Institut du Monde Arabe.
The rich and mixed collection speaks to Gaza’s past as a cultural melting pot, but the show’s creators also wanted to highlight the contemporary destruction caused by the war, sparked by Hamas’s attack on Israel in October 2023.
“The priority is obviously human lives, not heritage,” said Elodie Bouffard, curator of the exhibition, which is titled “Saved Treasures of Gaza: 5,000 Years of History.”
“But we also wanted to show that, for millennia, Gaza was the endpoint of caravan routes, a port that minted its own currency, and a city that thrived at the meeting point of water and sand,” she told AFP.
One section of the exhibition documents the extent of recent destruction.
Using satellite image, the UN’s cultural agency UNESCO has already identified damage to 94 heritage sites in Gaza, including the 13th-century Pasha’s Palace.
Bouffard said the damage to the known sites as well as treasures potentially hidden in unexplored Palestinian land “depends on the bomb tonnage and their impact on the surface and underground.”
“For now, it’s impossible to assess.”
The attacks by Hamas militants on Israel in 2023 left 1,218 dead. In retaliation, Israeli operations have killed more than 50,000 Palestinians and devastated the densely populated territory.

The story behind “Gaza’s Treasures” is inseparable from the ongoing wars in the Middle East.
At the end of 2024, the Institut du Monde Arabe was finalizing an exhibition on artifacts from the archaeological site of Byblos in Lebanon, but Israeli bombings on Beirut made the project impossible.
“It came to a sudden halt, but we couldn’t allow ourselves to be discouraged,” said Bouffard.
The idea of an exhibition on Gaza’s heritage emerged.
“We had just four and a half months to put it together. That had never been done before,” she explained.
Given the impossibility of transporting artifacts out of Gaza, the Institut turned to 529 pieces stored in crates in a specialized Geneva art warehouse since 2006. The works belong to the Palestinian Authority, which administers the West Bank.

The Oslo Accords of 1993, signed by the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel, helped secure some of Gaza’s treasures.
In 1995, Gaza’s Department of Antiquities was established, which oversaw the first archaeological digs in collaboration with the French Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem (EBAF).
Over the years, excavations uncovered the remains of the Monastery of Saint Hilarion, the ancient Greek port of Anthedon, and a Roman necropolis — traces of civilizations spanning from the Bronze Age to Ottoman influences in the late 19th century.
“Between Egypt, Mesopotamian powers, and the Hasmoneans, Gaza has been a constant target of conquest and destruction throughout history,” Bouffard noted.
In the 4th century BC, Greek leader Alexander the Great besieged the city for two months, leaving behind massacres and devastation.
Excavations in Gaza came to a standstill when Hamas took power in 2007 and Israel imposed a blockade.
Land pressure and rampant building in one of the world’s most densely populated areas has also complicated archaeological work.
And after a year and a half of war, resuming excavations seems like an ever-more distant prospect.
The exhibition runs until November 2, 2025.
 

 


Uganda’s president arrives in S.Sudan as crisis deepens

Updated 03 April 2025
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Uganda’s president arrives in S.Sudan as crisis deepens

  • The Ugandan leader, whose military was invited into South Sudan last month to help secure the capital, did not refer directly to the crisis in public remarks at the airport in Juba

NAIROBI: Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni arrived in neighboring South Sudan on Thursday, in the highest level mission there since clashes and the detention of the vice president triggered regional fears of a return to civil war.
Museveni was met at the airport by South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir, whose administration has accused First Vice President Riek Machar of stoking rebellion and put him under house arrest.
The Ugandan leader, whose military was invited into South Sudan last month to help secure the capital, did not refer directly to the crisis in public remarks at the airport in Juba.
The visit follows mediation missions by the African Union and an East African regional body this week to de-escalate the crisis.
Museveni told reporters he would hold talks “aimed at strengthening bilateral relations and enhancing cooperation between our two nations.”
Kiir said the two leaders would discuss “current political developments in the country.”
The standoff between Kiir and Machar, who led opposing forces in a 2013-2018 civil war that killed hundreds of thousands, has prompted the UN to warn that the world’s young nation could be on the brink of all-out conflict along ethnic lines.
Uganda backed Kiir’s forces during the civil war.
It sent troops last month amid fighting between South Sudan’s military and an ethnic Nuer militia in Upper Nile state in the northeast.
Machar’s predominantly Nuer forces were allied with the White Army militia during the civil war, but his party denies government accusations of ongoing links.
Uganda’s military chief, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, also Museveni’s son, said on Tuesday he had ordered Ugandan forces to stop attacking the White Army so long as it ceases offensives against Ugandan troops.
Machar’s party says the Ugandan intervention violates South Sudan’s arms embargo.
Analysts say Kiir, 73, appears to be attempting to shore up his position amid discontent within his political camp and speculation about his succession plan.