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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Arab world mourns the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, an unwavering ally of the region throughout her 70-year reign. (Supplied/Royal Family)
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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.

 


India brings home nearly 300 citizens rescued from Southeast Asian scam centers

Updated 6 sec ago
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India brings home nearly 300 citizens rescued from Southeast Asian scam centers

  • Thousands of people have been freed from cyber scam centers
  • Countries are working together to crack down on the criminal networks
NEW DELHI: India has brought home nearly 300 of its nationals who were lured to various southeast Asian countries, including Myanmar, with fake job offers and made to engage in cybercrime and other fraudulent activities in scam compounds, the government said.
Thousands of people have been freed from cyber scam centers along the Thailand-Myanmar border this year as countries work together to crack down on the criminal networks.
China and Indonesia repatriated some of their citizens last month.
“Indian embassies in Myanmar and Thailand have coordinated with local authorities to secure the repatriation of 283 Indian nationals today by an IAF (Indian Air Force) aircraft from Mae Sot in Thailand,” India’s foreign ministry said late on Monday.
Thailand arrested 100 people last week as a part of its crackdown on the scam centers.
Criminal gangs have trafficked hundreds of thousands of people to the centers, which generate billions of dollars a year from illegal online schemes, according to the United Nations.
India also warned its citizens against the scams, advising them to “verify” the credentials of foreign employers and check the “antecedents” of recruiting agents and companies before taking up job offers.

WHO warns difficult decisions ‘unavoidable’ as it slims down recruitment

Updated 3 min 26 sec ago
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WHO warns difficult decisions ‘unavoidable’ as it slims down recruitment

  • The WHO has begun “prioritization” work to make the global health agency sustainable, the document says

GENEVA: The World Health Organization has warned that difficult decisions will be “unavoidable” in an internal memo seen by Reuters on Tuesday announcing a recruitment freeze and a one-year limit on new fixed-term contracts.
The WHO has begun “prioritization” work to make the global health agency sustainable, the document says, adding that staff are working to secure additional funding from countries, private donors and philanthropists.


UN migration agency in turmoil after US aid freeze

Updated 11 March 2025
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UN migration agency in turmoil after US aid freeze

  • The UN agency, which at the end of last year employed around 22,000 people, has already laid off thousands
  • The IOM announced on February 1 that it was scaling up its efforts across Latin America and the Caribbean

GENEVA: Hit hard by US aid funding cuts, the UN migration agency is battling claims from current and former staff of now pandering to Washington and providing cover for mass deportations.
Like many humanitarian agencies, the International Organization for Migration has been reeling since President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January, pushing an anti-migrant agenda and immediately freezing most US foreign aid funding.
“These funding cuts directly affect IOM’s ability to support some of the world’s most vulnerable people,” an IOM spokesperson said, warning this would “lead to more suffering, increased migration, and greater insecurity.”
The United Nations agency, which at the end of last year employed around 22,000 people, has already laid off thousands.
It has also been accused of allowing its assisted voluntary return (AVR) program to be used to “bluewash” — or give a UN stamp of approval — to Trump’s mass deportation scheme.
IOM announced on February 1 that it was scaling up its efforts across Latin America and the Caribbean “to help migrants return home, reintegrate and rebuild their lives.”
It said it had resumed its AVR programs in Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras, as well as Panama, which with Costa Rica has reached an agreement to take in migrants from other countries deported by the United States.
Describing its activities as “a lifeline for stranded migrants,” it said it aimed to provide “urgent support” to those “unable or unwilling to remain where they are and need help to return home safely and with dignity.”
“Without this vital support, conditions for the people impacted would be far worse,” the spokesperson insisted.
But one of the thousands of IOM employees who received notice last month warned it looked “like there is an effort to align ourselves with the administration.”
This was “very concerning,” she said, asking not to be named.
“It really looks very bad for IOM’s reputation,” agreed a former agency staff member, also speaking on condition of anonymity.
The criticisms come as the IOM seeks its footing after the threat that all US funding — accounting for around 40 percent of its total financing — could evaporate indefinitely.
“We have to make some really hard decisions about staff because we simply can’t afford to pay staff when we’re not actually being paid for our work,” IOM chief Amy Pope said recently.
The biggest impact so far has been seen in connection with the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), since the Trump administration has suspended all refugee entries into the country.
Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden embraced the program designed to facilitate legal resettlement of vetted refugees, resettling over 100,000 refugees in the United States last year.
Trump’s sudden about-face prompted the IOM last month to send pink slips to 3,000 staff, warning more “adjustments” were likely.
“It was quite a shock,” the dismissed staff member said.
Another former employee said staff were “appalled” by the swift pace of the layoffs.
Those at IOM headquarters in Geneva were especially bracing for more mass job cuts.
According to an internal memo from the IOM’s Global Staff Association Committee, seen by AFP, management last month ordered directors to slash a certain percentage of their department costs.
Word inside headquarters is that around one third of around 550 staff there will soon get the axe, the former employee said, with “managers under huge pressure to meet quotas.”
“People are terrified... They’ve got laser beams pointed at their heads.”
IOM staff and union representatives have sent complaints to management about the abrupt layoffs, warning of detrimental impacts on employees and on many of the tens of millions of migrants the organization serves.
Also sparking outrage was a report by the Devex news organization last month suggesting IOM had scrubbed its website of content that could be construed as promoting Trump’s bete noir — DEI (diversity, equality and inclusion).
IOM did not respond directly to that allegation but said it had “recently relaunched its global website following a year-long review, refining content to align with evolving contexts and in accordance with United Nations humanitarian principles.”
The laid-off employee said the Devex report “really hurt.”
“We can align ourselves with certain priorities of this (US) administration,” she said.
“But we shouldn’t lose our identity in the process.”


UN migration agency says aid to Rohingya in Indonesia reinstated

Updated 11 March 2025
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UN migration agency says aid to Rohingya in Indonesia reinstated

  • Chief of mission, Jeff Labovitz, said there is no current planned reduction in services

JAKARTA: The United Nations’ migration agency has reinstated its humanitarian assistance to Rohingya refugees in Indonesia, its chief of mission in Jakarta told Reuters on Tuesday.
Chief of mission, Jeff Labovitz, said there is no current planned reduction in services.
A Reuters report last week cited the agency as saying it would slash aid to hundreds of Rohingya sheltering in the city of Pekanbaru on the island of Sumatra.


Dalai Lama says his successor to be born outside China

Updated 11 March 2025
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Dalai Lama says his successor to be born outside China

  • Tibetans worldwide want the institution of the Dalai Lama to continue after the 89-year-old’s death
  • Tibetan tradition holds that the soul of a senior Buddhist monk is reincarnated in the body of a child on his death

NEW DELHI: The Dalai Lama’s successor will be born outside China, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism says in a new book, raising the stakes in a dispute with Beijing over control of the Himalayan region he fled more than six decades ago.
Tibetans worldwide want the institution of the Dalai Lama to continue after the 89-year-old’s death, he writes in “Voice for the Voiceless,” which was reviewed by Reuters and is being released on Tuesday.
He had previously said the line of spiritual leaders might end with him. His book marks the first time the Dalai Lama has specified that his successor would be born in the “free world,” which he describes as outside China. He has previously said only that he could reincarnate outside Tibet, possibly in India where he lives in exile.
“Since the purpose of a reincarnation is to carry on the work of the predecessor, the new Dalai Lama will be born in the free world so that the traditional mission of the Dalai Lama – that is, to be the voice for universal compassion, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, and the symbol of Tibet embodying the aspirations of the Tibetan people – will continue,” the Dalai Lama writes.
Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, fled at the age of 23 to India with thousands of other Tibetans in 1959 after a failed uprising against the rule of Mao Zedong’s Communists.
Beijing insists it will choose his successor, but the Dalai Lama has said any successor named by China would not be respected.
China brands the Dalai Lama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for keeping alive the Tibetan cause, as a “separatist.”
When asked about the book at a press briefing on Monday, a spokesperson for China’s foreign ministry said the Dalai Lama “is a political exile who is engaged in anti-China separatist activities under the cloak of religion.
“On the Tibet issue, China’s position is consistent and clear. What the Dalai Lama says and does cannot change the objective fact of Tibet’s prosperity and development.”
Supporters of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan cause include Richard Gere, a follower of Tibetan Buddhism, and Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the US House of Representatives. His followers have been worried about his health, especially after knee surgery last year. He said in December that he might live to be 110.
In his book, the Dalai Lama says he has received numerous petitions for more than a decade from a wide spectrum of Tibetan people, including senior monks and Tibetans living in Tibet and outside, “uniformly asking me to ensure that the Dalai Lama lineage be continued.”
Tibetan tradition holds that the soul of a senior Buddhist monk is reincarnated in the body of a child on his death. The current Dalai Lama was identified as the reincarnation of his predecessor when he was two.
The book, which the Dalai Lama calls an account of his dealings with Chinese leaders over seven decades, is being published on Tuesday in the US by William Morrow and in Britain by HarperNonFiction, with HarperCollins publications to follow in India and other countries.
He expressed faith in the Tibetan government and parliament-in-exile, based with him in India’s Himalayan city of Dharamshala, to carry on the political work for the Tibetan cause.
“The right of the Tibetan people to be the custodians of their own homeland cannot be indefinitely denied, nor can their aspiration for freedom be crushed forever through oppression,” he writes. “One clear lesson we know from history is this: if you keep people permanently unhappy, you cannot have a stable society.”
Given his advanced age, he writes, his hopes of going back to Tibet look “increasingly unlikely.”