zaterdag 10 december 2016
German defence minister on the offensive in the Middle East
Defence
Minister Ursula von der Leyen with her Saudi Arabian counterpart,
Mohammad bin Salman Al Saud, in Riyadh.
Photo: DPA.
By
Johannes Stern
German
Defence Minister Ursula Von der Leyen (Christian Democratic Union,
CDU) is currently on tour in the Middle East. The central goal of the
trip is the strengthening of Germany’s political, economic and
military influence in this resource-rich and geo-strategically
critical region.
Von
der Leyen’s first stop was the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where she
was met Wednesday evening at the King Salman Air Base in Riyadh by
Saudi deputy defence minister General Mohammed bin Abdullah Al-Ayesh,
German ambassador Dieter Walter Haller and defence attaché Colonel
Thomas Schneider.
On
Thursday, the defence minister visited the headquarters of the
so-called Islamic Military Counter-Terrorism Coalition and asserted
in an official press release that Saudi Arabia was a country which
“decisively combats terrorism and is aware it has a special role in
combatting Muslim-Arabic terrorism in the Islamic world.”
This
is patently absurd. Hardly anything could more clearly expose the
German government’s empty phrases about human rights and propaganda
about the “war on terror” than the close military and political
collaboration between the Western powers and Saudi Arabia.
The
reactionary and Islamist character of the Saudi regime is so obvious
that even the German media could not avoid raising some issues.
According to the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung,
there were “throughout last year … more than 150 executions.
There are also frequent public floggings, [and] the rights of women
and minorities are massively curtailed.”
About
the impact of Saudi Arabia’s bombing campaign in Yemen, the
Süddeutsche
Zeitung noted:
“The bombardments have destroyed the infrastructure of the Arab
world’s poorest country and repeatedly kill civilians. According to
investigations by human rights activists, one in three attacks strike
civilian targets.” According to the UN, “the more than 10,000
victims of the war include more than 4,000 civilians––many die
from bombs from the air which frequently strike hospitals.”
And,
according to public broadcaster ARD, “Saudi Arabia is … a strict
Islamic governed monarchy, in which––much like the Islamic State
(IS)––political opponents are beheaded and women stoned if they
end a marriage.”
In
Syria, Saudi Arabia is among the chief sponsors of Islamist militias
with close ties to al-Qaeda and which are officially designated as
terrorist organisations by the German government. The Ahrar al-Sham
militia, backed financially and politically by Saudi Arabia, is a
“foreign terrorist organisation,” according to the German
attorney general, and “one of the largest and most influential
Salafist-Jihadi organisations in the Syrian uprising movement.” It
pursues the goal of “toppling the regime of Syrian ruler [Bashar
al-] Assad and establish a theocratic state based entirely on Sharia
law.”
None
of this has prevented the German government and defence minister from
intensifying military cooperation with Saudi Arabia. According to
reports, Von der Leyen pledged to train Saudi soldiers in Germany.
The training of “several young officers and contractors with the
Saudi Arabian military” will begin in Germany in the coming year,
the German ambassador announced Thursday.
In
addition, further arms exports to the Gulf monarchy are planned.
Recently the Federal Security Council, meeting in secret, approved
the shipment of 41,644 shells to Saudi Arabia, even though Germany’s
official export guidelines prohibit the supplying of arms to states
“engaged in armed conflicts.” According to government sources,
weapons exports totaling more than €484 million [$US 511 million]
were approved to Saudi Arabia in the first half of the year,
including helicopters and components for fighter jets.
With
its massive rearmament of the Saudi monarchy, Berlin is pursuing two
main goals. First, Riyadh is to be placed in a better position to
violently suppress social unrest on the Arabian Peninsula. In early
2011, a few weeks after the revolutionary upsurges in Tunisia and
Egypt, Saudi troops and tanks intervened in Bahrain with brutal
violence to suppress mass protests taking place there. In addition,
the German government views the heavily armed Arab monarchies as
important allies in the imposition of German imperialist interests in
the region.
After
her stay in Riyadh, Von der Leyen travelled directly to Bahrain. She
participated in the Manama dialogue, the most important security
conference in the Middle East. Several heads of state and government,
ministers, military personnel and representatives from security
agencies attended the event organised by the influential
International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) think tank to
discuss the wars and conflicts in the region.
Von
der Leyen’s last destination is Jordan, where she will symbolically
hand over 24 “Marder”–type armoured vehicles.
Von
der Leyen spoke in Bahrain in 2015, announcing greater German
engagement in the Middle East. At the time, the Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung enthused
in an opinion piece, “Germany is no longer indifferent. Germany has
managed to expand its foreign policy weight. At the Manama Dialogue,
Defence Minister Von der Leyen can point out that the Federal
Republic is no longer holding back.”
The
“fundamental German interest” in the region was already
summarised in a strategy paper by the CDU-aligned Konrad Adenauer
Foundation in 2001, “It is directed primarily towards a
stabilisation of those states and societies to prevent dangers to its
own security and that of its European partner states, to secure a
seamless supply of raw materials and to create export opportunities
for German business.”
The
study, entitled “Germany and the Middle East: standpoint and
recommendations for action,” emphasised the importance of the
“export markets in the region’s core states (Egypt, Turkey,
Iran), but above all the wealthy Gulf states” for German exports.
Here it was necessary to “make a contribution to securing sales
markets, obtain the broadest possible access to these markets and
compete with the US, the Eastern European countries and also the East
Asian industrial countries.”
This
article first appeared on World
Socialist Web Site (WSWS)
on
10
December 2016,
and was republished with permission.
Labels:
Article in English,
Duitsland,
Egypte,
EU,
Internationale organisaties,
Iran,
Islamic State,
Jemen,
Jordanië,
Qatar,
Saudi Arabië,
Syrië,
Turkije,
UAE
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