The UK just claimed its Middle East ties are ‘stronger than ever’. Here’s what it means for human rights

Our strongest ever UK-Gulf ties.” This is how James Cleverly, the UK’s Middle East minister, enthusiastically summarised his recent visit to Qatar and Oman. It was a busy trip. While there, he was greeted by royalty, welcomed at trade shows, and rubbed shoulders with high-level dignitaries across both kingdoms. The visit was his first to either country since assuming the role, but it follows years of increased diplomacy and focus.

As people across the region are all too aware, the UK has never left the Middle East. But that didn’t stop Philip Hammond, then foreign secretary, from paternalistically proclaiming that “we and our European partners will be expected to take a greater share of the burden in the Gulf, the Near East and North Africa” as part of a 2014 “pivot” in UK military policy. Cleverly’s visit was the most recent step in the “return” strategy that Hammond had alluded to.

Who will benefit from these ever-strengthening ties? Thus far, the major beneficiaries have been arms companies, with multibillion-pound contracts playing a central role in UK-Gulf relations. In total, two-thirds of all UK arms exports already go to the embattled region.

In the last five years the UK has licensed at least £1.5bn worth of military equipment to Oman, and £550m to Qatar. The weapons sold include rifles, teargas, ammunition and almost everything in between. In 2018 the government signed a £5bn fighter jet deal with Qatar, which will see aircraft arriving from 2022.

Both countries have also signed major military agreements with Downing Street in recent weeks. These will link their militaries and foreign policy together with the UK for years to come.

The first of these came last month, when Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, announced £24m worth of funding to expand a UK naval base in the port of Duqm, Oman. In 2019, Wallace’s predecessor, Gavin Williamson, hailed the opening of the base as a “historic landmark moment” while praising the “statesmanship”, “knowledge” and “vision” of his Omani hosts. The new deal will see the base trebling in size.  

Wallace’s next big announcement came last week when he welcomed “the start of an exciting new chapter in the longstanding defence relationship” while officially opening a joint squadron between the UK and Qatar. The agreement sees Qatari forces training alongside UK forces at the RAF base in Coningsby, Lincoln.

One thing that has been totally ignored amid the celebrations and mutual praise is human rights. Both countries are presided over by hereditary dictatorships that rule via brutal and repressive military regimes and tight restrictions on free speech and basic freedoms. With so much military infrastructure in place, it is unlikely that Cleverly, Wallace or any of their colleagues will be drawing attention to those abuses any time soon.

We have seen where this kind of complicity and equivocation can lead. It is exactly what has happened in Bahrain, where the UK opened a £40m naval base in 2018, the biggest concentration of royal navy personnel outside the UK. Its announcement was met with protests in Bahrain. Activists marched on the UK embassy, only to be dispersed by teargas. As Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, director of Advocacy at the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy, said, “what the British government’s policies show is a commitment to military expansion at the cost of human rights. Bahrain continues to systemically arbitrarily arrest, torture and silence critics.”

It is no surprise that activists saw a link between UK military support and the authoritarianism of the Bahraini state. In 2013 the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee concluded: “Both the government and the opposition in Bahrain view UK defence sales as a signal of British support for the government.” The point was true of Bahrain, but it is one that can be applied far more generally.

When any military buys UK weapons or signs a military deal, it knows that it is also buying silence. In 2017, Michael Fallon, then defence secretary, went as far as urging MPs to stop calling for reforms in Saudi Arabia in case it made it harder to sell fighter jets. This came despite the central role that UK-made fighter jets, bombs and missiles are playing in the Saudi-led bombardment of Yemen.

With Brexit on the horizon, these “strongest-ever” ties will become an even greater focus as “Global Britain” seeks to strengthen its position beyond Europe. That is the view of Paul McGrade, a former EU policy adviser to Theresa May’s government, who told Arab Weekly that the UK will “want and need to deepen” its commercial relationships in the region. His advice must have rubbed off on May, who in 2016 set the tone by promising to “go even further” in working with Gulf countries.

The language used when these deals are signed is always one of “mutual interests”, etc, but these relationships are designed to strengthen and maintain an authoritarian status quo. If the last few years of UK policy in the region tells us anything, it is that ministers are happy to talk about the importance of human rights and democracy, but also that these values become expendable when there are military contracts on the table.  

Andrew Smith is a spokesperson for Campaign Against Arms Trade