Colonial Karma

Excuse the pun, but I was weary about reading David Wearing’s “AngloArabia: Why Gulf Wealth Matters to Britain”. This weariness was born out of the way he is positively referenced on social media by a new peculiar breed of intellectual that has recently emerged in British academia.  This peculiarity is defined by the Edward Said-quoting intellectual in question being sympathetic towards past anti-imperialist revolts, resistance and revolutionaries yet mysteriously silent on, manufacture consent for and even endorse contemporary British imperialist interventions such as in Libya or Syria. I’m thinking of an intellectual such as Professor Priyamvada Gopal and, I’m sure there are many others who morally juggle this perverse dichotomy, that is making a living researching past struggles against the Empire yet at the same time are at the very least silent on contemporary Western military interventions in the Global South. Indeed, Wearing informs the reader in the ‘Acknowledgements’ that Professor Gibert Achcar (who was in favour of the Libyan intervention) is “an invaluable mentor and a formative intellectual influence.”

“AngloArabia” is an examination of the relationship between the British state and the Gulf Arab States that make up the Gulf Corporation Council (GCC) in the post Cold War era. However, the first chapter, “Empire’s Legacy” which aims to provide a historical account of how the Arab tribes that came to rule the Gulf from the nineteenth century leading up to the Cold War, confirmed my expectations. First of all, Wearing claims that “by the end of the nineteenth century, the Gulf was firmly under British control, with the British resident (London’s chief regional diplomat) able to call in naval support…under the overall command of the Bombay government.”[i] This is very confusing and tells us nothing about the role of the “resident” and what his role was. The ‘resident’ was not an innocuous role, post or title. Far from it. The “resident” was a central figure of the imperial ruling system called “Indirect Rule” the British Empire conclusively established after the Indian uprising of 1857 was finally crushed. After this revolt, the Empire concluded that going forward it would be best to govern India through regional puppets with a British resident in the background pulling the strings and calling the shots. One of the reasons for this strategy is if there were upheavals then any popular ire will be aimed at the puppet rather than the Empire. The nineteenth century Gulf rulers answered to the Resident in Bushire (which is in Iran) who was directly appointed and accountable to the British Empire in India. It was this Resident in Bushire more than anyone else who established the rulers in the Gulf.[ii]  

Secondly, Wearing’s slipshod history of the Arabian politics in the early twentieth century is entirely slippery and largely incorrect. For example, he implies that the League of Nations carved-up the Arab world after World War 1 and that Britain was a mere beneficiary. As such Britain ‘gained custodianship’ of a number of the new territories. The fact is the Anglo-French carve up of the region, known as the Sykes-Picot agreement, was rubber stamped by the League of Nations which was dominated by the victors of World War 1.[iii] Thirdly, his notion that “modern Saudi Arabia can trace back to the mid-eighteenth century”[iv] is misleading. The Saudi-Wahhabi entity that emerged in the eighteenth century was crushed and defeated and the Ibn Saud clan which had led the way in the establishment of this entity was in exile until, with British military arms, they re-emerged in 1902 and captured their supposedly ancestral capital, Riyadh. Fourthly, he goes onto say that Britain “achieved victory in the Middle Eastern theatre of the First World War in large part by cultivating alliances with local rulers against the Ottomans.”[v] This is disingenuous spin. The most consequential Arab contribution on behalf of the British Empire during World War One was the so-called ‘Arab Revolt’. This revolt was rooted in the McMahon-Hussain letters which gave the impression to Sharif Hussain al-Hashimi, the ruler of Hijaz (western side of the Arabian peninsula covering Mecca and Medina), that a united Arab country stretching across the entire Arab Middle East will emerge once the Ottomans were defeated. On this basis the notion of “cultivating alliances” is mere newspeak for hiding the fact the British Empire deceives Arabs to revolt in order to do its bidding. Fifthly, he argues that it was “the Hashemites who went to lead the Arab Revolt” but the “Saudi role was more passive”. I’ve already explained why the Hashemites led the revolt, but his notion that the Saudi role was passive, is, if not ignorant then an outright lie. The British certainly had a role for Ibn Saud and his Wahhabi henchmen, unfortunately Ibn Saud and his British handler, a certain William Shakespear, were defeated by Ottoman forces in early 1915. Hence the need to turn to deceive the Hashemites to do the Empire’s bidding. Sixthly, Wearing argues that after the end the WW1 “Saudi-Hashemite rivalry escalated into all out war” until Ibn Saud expelled the Hashemites from the western part of the Arabian peninsula. Once again this is a very misleading account of history, it could even possibly be considered a deception. What actually happened is that from the end of the World War One until the mid 1920s, Sharif Hussain wanted to hold Britain to its pre-war promises, (Hussain-McMahon letters), of a united Arab state, while the British wanted to pin him down and box him into a mere Anglo-Hijaz treaty with an article recognising the de facto handing over of Palestine to the proposed British Zionist project. Hussain refused, then lo and behold, Ibn Saud moved his henchmen into the Hijaz in the mid-1920s and have since been occupying Mecca and Medina since. As can be seen, the instrumentalization of Ibn Saud for British imperialist purposes runs deep.

Finally, although, Wearing speaks of British imperial decline and the American succession[vi] he doesn’t clarify how this decline emerged: with the rise of new powers which Britain could not militarily beat back by itself. In World War One, Britain needed to beg and convince its former colony, the United States, to fight in western Europe in order to win. In World War Two, Hitler’s Germany wanted to create a Germanic Empire, the Third Reich, inspired by the British Empire in India. Germany had easily defeated the forces of French, British, Dutch and, Belgian imperialisms in the first half of 1940 and had it not been for mostly the Soviet Union and the United States, it would be fair to argue that western Europe would now be under German Nazi rule. The total failure of western European imperialist countries to defend themselves against Nazi Germany and Japan in the early 1940s allowed the United States to emerge as the leading Western power after World War Two.

However, for the United States to be successful it needed economically viable western countries to trade with so it had no choice but to defend those European imperial interests vital to its own economic well-being.[vii] That meant helping to maintain the Gulf regional order established by British imperialism after World War One. As Wearing lets it be known the British perceived this order threated by Third World nationalism, which in the Arab World was personified by the leadership of Gamal Abdul Nasser:

“the fear was that independence and popular self-determination would result in the expulsion of British advisers from the governments of local regimes, the expropriation of British assets…[As such] Nationalist movements were therefore deemed unacceptable…[therefore]…British imperial power committed itself to shoring up and defending the autocratic regional it had helped to establish.”[viii]

One of the first autocracies the Empire committed itself to shore up was in Iran. When the democratically elected Iranian Prime Minister Mossadeq nationalised the British company, Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AOIC, now BP) denying the British treasury income and therefore threatening its viability, the British successfully convinced the Americans to overthrow Iranian democracy and reinstall the supreme leader, The Shah. Wearing dresses this up as “the US and Britain collaborated in the 1953 overthrow of Mossadeq, with the CIA leading the operation.”[ix] This clearly gives the impression that it was an American initiative to overthrow Mossadeq  yet the opening sentence of the following paragraph, he correctly states, “The price for Washington coming to London’s aid against Mossadeq was a reduced (though still significant) stake for AIOC in Iranian oil, with Shell and a number of US firms moving in.”[x] This is spin. What happened was that for the United States to assist British imperialism in overthrowing Iranian democracy, America was awarded a “cut” in Iranian oil. Whereas before Mossadeq, the AOIC had the lion’s share of Iranian oil, about 80%, after he was overthrown, the American “price” was a 40% cut for its own oil companies. This is the geo-politics of what lays behind Wearing’s “reduced stake for AIOC in Iranian oil”. Wearing almost makes AIOC sound like a victim of American imperialism!

Having clarified the crudity in the opening chapter, the rest of the book is very insightful and informative. In the second chapter he delves into the politics of oil. He argues and shows that Britain is not dependent on the Gulf states for its oil and gas but is supportive of US global hegemony. For the US, also not dependent on the Gulf for its oil and gas, casting its military dominance over the region allows it a lever over the world economy, and by extension, a lever over the economies of any potential global rival and also allies. The latter is not a new opinion. Professor Noam Chomsky in his writings on the Middle East over the last 40 years has argued the same point. Wearing argues that Britain supports US global hegemony because Britain has,

“a clear preference for and active commitment to the continuation of US hegemony…with its own state and capitalist interests seen as best pursued within that overall framework”[xi]

The third and forth chapters are the most instructive part of the book. The focus here is on the petrodollars. When Egypt and Syria went to war in the 1973 to liberate territory lost to Israel in the 1967 war and liberate Palestine, the Gulf states withheld oil production causing the price of oil to rise and, according to Wearing, the price of oil quadrupled. This new money flowing to the Gulf from these higher oil prices came to be referred as petrodollars. These profits became a financial force of their own which the former imperial master took full advantage of. At this moment, Wearing argues that, surprise, surprise, “capitalism in the Gulf Arab monarchies has developed in such a way as to compliment British capitalism.”[xii] Who would have thought?! And he again really stuns the reader when he further declares that British and Gulf capitalisms “have come to fit together in the modern era”[xiii] Wearing tells us why Britain is so prominent in the Gulf and specifically why it benefitted from petrodollars:

“because of the relationships that had developed between the Gulf elites and London throughout the imperial era. The British Bank of the Middle East (BBME) was the first bank in Kuwait, Dubai, Sharjah, Abu Dhabi and Oman and played a key role in handling oil revenues up until the 1970s.”[xiv]

In other words, Britain played a major role in created the banking system for the sons of the puppets it had installed in the imperial era, via the Resident in Bushire. As such “British financiers were highly successful in attracting petrodollar investment and winning the spoils of the 1970s oil shocks.”[xv]It would’ve been a surprise if British financiers had not been successful or won the petrodollars. (Also, note the term “elite” to describe these British appointed rulers.)

Wearing also discusses the Gulf Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWF) where he seems to take his lead from a paper written by Saleh Nsouli, “Petrodollar Recycling and Global Imbalances” and also a book written Sara Bazoobandi, “The Political Economy of the Gulf Sovereign Wealth Funds”. He reiterates again, the recycling of petrodollars into Britain was established “in and inherited from the days of formal empire [and], is central to UK and GCC relations today.”[xvi] Wearing argues that the SWF are the “key vehicles of petrodollar recycling”.[xvii]

During the era of unrivalled British Imperialism, the vehicle to bring back the loot and pillage from other countries were manned ships. Ships were used to travel to west Africa to capture black skin to be taken across the Atlantic for the new European owned plantations and settlements; ships were used to “trade” with India and Asia. The British state in collusion with its appointed puppets use SWF as a vehicle to plough the Gulf regions profits to their former imperial master’s metropole. Wearing approvingly quotes Bazoobandi,

“it is unlikely that the governments of Kuwait or Saudi Arabia will find it easy to diversify their financial strategies from their political alliance with the former colonial powers that assisted them in their sovereignty. After all, there would have been no SWF if there was not a sovereign. However, the political alliance would direct these funds towards strategies in support of the West, if at all, rather than to impose national security threats on Western host countries”[xviii]

Wearing claims Kuwait has ploughed or “invested” £100 billion, Saudi Arabia £93 billion, Qatar £30 billion. Obviously, these are numbers that are made public and from the middle of the previous decade so the figures could be a lot more.[xix]Needless to say, “the power to direct investments lies with or very close to the state in the GCC”[xx] i.e. states created and leaders installed by the British Empire.  

Another insight Wearing confirms for those interested in modern British imperialism, is the importance of Gulf states in bailing out failing British businesses. In standard Orwellian parlance, he writes that “Gulf capital also has the potential to play an important stabilising role in times of crises.”[xxi] Note the word “stabilising” instead of bailout. He validates this with the way Barclays Bank was bailed out by Qatari and UAE princes during the 2008 financial crises. So over and above the SWF, when those aren’t sufficient to keep the wheels of the British capitalism greased, a further dose of state loans from its puppet rulers is required.[xxii]  

Wearing also introduces the reader to the ways modern British imperialism tries to wring more monies from its Gulf puppets. For example trade experts from UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar travelled to the north east of England “to encourage local firms to pursue more business opportunities in the Gulf”[xxiii]and then there is secret governmental group in the British Treasury called ‘Project Falcon’ which was set up to direct UAE and Qatari “investments” into the UK.[xxiv] Another case known to this author that is not mentioned in this book is the £5 billion Qatar committed to infrastructure projects in Birmingham, England’s second city.

Chapter Five of the book is about how the Gulf rulers keep the British military-industrial complex well oiled. Although the title of the chapter is “Arming Authoritarianism” a more honest title would have been “Selling Weapons to our Gulf puppets because they have no Choice but to Buy” and Wearing does hint that this is the case. But before he does so, he invites humour by informing the reader that the reason the Gulf states purchase these weapons, is because by “helping to sustain British military power through arms purchases…they have a powerful ally in the global north.”[xxv] The fact is they have no choice but to purchase weapons. As much as the British establishment and its media wants to morally indulge itself in debates and enquiries about financial corruption when it comes to arms sales to the Gulf states, behind closed doors, a Saudi officials lets it be known, that these sales are thrust on them, “Why do Western leaders preach budget restraint to Riyadh, yet insistently push huge arms contracts at it?”[xxvi] The chapter covers the multi-billion pound Salaam and Yammamah deals. These deals along with other weapons sold to the GCC over the last 40 years are worth hundreds of billions of pounds sterling and contributed immensely, if not existentially, to Britain’s leading arms manufacturers and their supply chains. It may seem that all the media’s fanfare about dubious commercial practices with regard to these deals is an insincere and pompous smokescreen to conceal what is actually going on, i.e. propping up British industry. And Wearing reiterates that this relationship with the arms industry is nothing new because, “arms sales to the Gulf Arab monarchies are but one important part of an extensive system of military cooperation whose roots can be traced back to Britain’s imperial heyday.”[xxvii]One example of these roots is that when you are selling to Saudi Arabia, you’re actually selling to the Saudi Royal family.[xxviii]It was British imperialism that revived and bought the Saudi clan to power. It needs to be emphasised that this is a very important point because if the time comes, and these lackey regimes in the Arabian peninsula are overthrown, there is definitely grounds to make a legal case for compensation and reparations from the British establishment for foisting these clans (ie “regional conservative order”) on the Arab people and then compelling them to purchase its weapons, “stabilise” (ie subsidise) and “invest” in the British economy.

The final chapter is about the “Arab Spring” and once again Wearing falls short by solely focusing on Bahrain and the war in Yemen. Wearing’s issue is with the legalese behind British support, military and otherwise, for the supposedly Saudi supported and led military campaign in these respective countries. If he had a more historically robust hold on how the Saudi clan came to rule a nation-state, it would not be far-fetched to argue that the Saudi royal family has always done British imperialism’s geo-political bidding. Wearing alludes to this role by quoting a Saudi expert’s opinion to a Foreign Affairs Select Committee report on the UK relationship with Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, a certain Robert Lacey, who argued that Saudi Arabia is doing Britain’s “dirty work” in Bahrain.[xxix] Furthermore, in the same report, there are real echoes of the British Empire’s “Indirect Role” when a Middle East expert is quoted as saying that Britain does “not want to be seen…to be aiding and abetting oppression of civilian population.”[xxx] The key word here is, seen. But the ultimate scandal of this chapter is that the British led NATO military intervention in Libya in 2011 is totally, and criminally, overlooked. The notion that the imperialist powers may have taken advantage of legitimate grievances to initiate a Libyan regime-change operation with its attendant media propaganda is not something Wearing seems to be interested in. This is understandable since as Wearing informs at the outset, Gilbert Achcar is his “invaluable mentor” who in turn had supported the intervention. Indeed, Achcar had complained the United States wasn’t dropping enough bombs on Libya when the military campaign seemed to be dragging. It has now transpired that Achcar had been advising and providing educational courses to the British military.

A British Parliamentary report on the intervention in Libya, published in 2016 well within the period for Wearing to include in his book, admitted and conceded stories of Muammar Gadhaffi’s supposed atrocities, which were used to justify the NATO no-fly zone, could not be confirmed or, as it says it, “could not verify the actual threat to civilians posed by the Ghadhaffi regime; it selectively took elements of Muammar Ghadhaffi’s rhetoric at face value…” Furthermore, the report claimed that the government “failed to identify the militant Islamist extremist element in the rebellion.” The report grudgingly admitted the intervention was based on “erroneous assumptions.”[xxxi]In effect, all the propaganda about an imminent massacre in Benghazi in 2011 turned out, like the propaganda to justify the war on Iraq in 2003, a pack of lies. Why Wearing decided to ignore this report but was happy to quote from and use other parliamentary reports for this book is at the least a mystery; at most complicity with his “invaluable mentor”.

The British (and French) state worked with GCC states, especially Qatar, in the Libya intervention to destroy one of the most affluent countries, if not the most affluent, in Africa. Out of a population of six million, millions of Libyans were displaced both internally and externally. A further consequence of this intervention is that millions of migrant workers that were in Libya were forced to flee the country which in turn helped to create the Mediterranean migration crises of the last decade. Another consequence was the re-establishment of black African slavery in Libya.    

Overall, what’s surprising is that it never ethically, intellectually or politically occurs to Wearing that all the hundreds of billions, maybe trillions of petrodollars, spent propping up the British economy could have been used locally in the Arab World to ameliorate the massive issues with poverty and development. For Wearing, Gulf wealth matters to Britain because of mostly the British financial industry and the British industrial-complex are enamoured of its petrodollars. The isolating and scapegoating of these two sectors is not novel. It’s not uncommon in the history of British imperialism to come across intellectual apologists or even tricknologists who argued the British Empire had nothing to do with them personally or that the general populace never benefited from it and as such some socio-economic demographic was singled out as the main beneficiary behind the Empire’s wanton rapaciousness. With this in mind, it’s important to draw attention to four areas of the British-GCC relationship that have been avoided in this study.

Firstly, the issue of GCC states financial support for Islamist extremism is another absentee in the discussion in this book. Wearing surely knows the Gulf states, especially states such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are major supporters of this political trend which during the entire the Cold War period were used to undermine independent Global South states. Saudi Arabia has pumped billions into promoting its brand of Islam, Wahhabism around the world. That there may be a link between Gulf “investments” or financial “stabilisation” in Britain and the promotion of sectarian Islamist movements in the wider Arab World is not a question he addresses. Indeed, Wearing seems to be oblivious to the role Islamist movements have historically played in consolidating the imperialist order in the Arab World yet he references the historian Dr. Mark Curtis, who has written a book on the collusion Britain and Islamist politics during the Cold War era and beyond.[xxxii] One is compelled to ask, could it be that in Libya and Syria during the so-called “Arab Spring”, Britain ordered its Gulf puppet’s to support and finance these Islamists extremists in those countries? Furthermore, it’s a legitimate question to ask how much has been spent on these Islamists movements as a way to compliment and consolidate the wealth flow from the Gulf to Britain.

Secondly, the numbers of British expatriate workers in the Gulf is referenced passingly once but not discussed. There are no solid figures on the actual numbers but it would be that at least 250,000 Britons working in the Gulf where had they not been it would be very difficult to visualise were they would be employed. This may also explain the boast in the British media that youth unemployment in the UK is not as bad as say in the southern Europe. The British state may have established an outlet for surplus labour the way it did in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with colonialism in the Americas, Australia, South Africa, India. A journalist report in the Daily Mail back in 2008, noted that in the UAE, Emirates are first in line to civil service employment but, “the plethora of perk-laden, tax-free jobs in the new foreign businesses in places such as Media City and Internet City routinely go to candidates from London, Birmingham and Manchester.” The journalist refers to this situation as a “modern form of colonisation”.[xxxiii] The flip side of the imperialist state is that it needs an outlet for surplus population in the metropole overwise this population would put massive pressure, even revolutionary pressure, on the domestic front to provide employment opportunities that simply don’t domestically exist.

Thirdly, Wearing focuses on high profile financial and business “investments” projects were Gulf wealth is easily transparent in Britain, such as the London Shard, Harrods, the redevelopment of Battersea power station or the Travelodge Hotels.[xxxiv] But I’m sure there are many low-key British businesses which have benefited from Gulf largesse. For example, Little Chef Diner and La Senza retailer were bailed out by Kuwaiti investments. Another investment company called “Arab Investments” which is headquartered in London specialises in pumping money into mainly the property sector of British economy. Several years ago, Arab Investments bailed out a coffee bar chain, Coffee Republic. One of the world’s leading  wheel alloy manufacturers based in the West Midlands, Rimstock is jointly owned by a Gulf investment company, Sanafad. Gulf wealth matters to Britain because it is of overall existential importance to British capitalism, not just the arms and financial industry.

Fourthly, a chapter or section should have been provided on the GCC ploughing petrodollars into educational, cultural and media institutions. There are many UK universities which have benefited from Gulf donations, likewise British educational institutions have opened up many branches in the Gulf. The lingua franca in the Gulf is English, not Arabic. Qatar’s al-Jazeera channel has an English division, which according to one of its more prominent anchors, Mehdi Hasan, is manned by mainly British staff. On the other hand, Qatar or Qatari individuals finance English speaking online journals such as Middle East Eye, Middle East Monitor and al-Araby al-Jadeed (The New Arab) operating out of London, all were sympathetic to the regime change in Libya and Syria. The Booker’s Book Prize has recently mentored and inaugurated an annual ceremony in the Gulf “to reward excellence” in contemporary Arabic creative writing as though Arabs didn’t know anything about excellence until the arrival of the Booker jury. The University of Birmingham claims its annex in the Gulf is testimony to its “global community” rather than establishing another revenue stream. Whether an Oxford-Cambridge boat race will be contested in the Gulf sponsored by Emirates or Itihad airlies, remains to be seen. In effect, the legitimising cultural edifice, what some would refer to as the cultural hegemony, to British economic priority in the Gulf is another oversight.     

In the conclusion of this book Wearing argues, “London needs to support American domination of the Gulf as part of its commitment to supporting US global hegemony.”[xxxv] He argues this British role is born out of choice. This is wrong because USA global hegemony came out of the failure of western European countries to repel the rise of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. We live in the era of US global hegemony because British imperialist global hegemony was trounced and on the verge of surrender in 1940. Therefore, the notion that Britain is currently supporting the Bahraini dictatorship because of its allegiance to US global hegemony is both preposterous and an insult to history. Britain needs US global hegemony because the world wars of the first half of the twentieth century proved that Britain didn’t possess the wherewithal to defend its own global interests by itself.[xxxvi] Or are we to assume that British capitalism would not have been interested in the Gulf had it not been for supporting US global hegemony?

From a historical view, the current British imperialist looting of Arabia through its GCC puppets needs to be placed in a wider context of British imperialism’s leading role in accruing blood-soaked wealth created from the African trans-atlantic slave trade, the centuries of total of plunder of India and the Opium wars on China. The wars on the interior of the Arab World, whether directly or indirectly (using either the Zionist entity or jihadi proxies financed by Saudi Arabia or Qatar) must be seen as coterminous and the means British imperialism consolidates its influence and financial hold of the Arab Gulf. The historian, Professor Gerald Horne, in his book, The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism, quotes a historian who argues, “the industrial revolution in England and the cotton plantation in the South were part of the same set of facts.”[xxxvii] Likewise, the propping up of the British economy with GCC largesse, and some within the latter group supporting jihadi groups in Libya, Syria and Iraq are all part of the “same set of facts”. Visually speaking, the Qatari financed London Shard, the tallest building in Britain and Qatari backed jihadis in Libya or Syria are two sides of the same coin.  

The business terminology used for looting of Arabia are “investments” and “financial stabilisation” for monies flowing into Britain. When British businesses or institutions crypto-colonially open branches in the GCC puppet states, cultural terminology such as “internationalism” or a “global” is employed to mask this endeavour. Britain has hitherto succeeded, with the support of the United States, in establishing its regional order in the Gulf. In effect, Arabia is the latest territory in British imperialism’s extraction of earth’s resources is used to maintain the relatively high level of living standards in Britain which in turn greatly helps to legitimise the British state. Wearing has done invaluable service by writing AngloArabia which at the very least provides the basic tools to understand contemporary British imperialism’s rapaciousness in today’s Gulf.

***

©Nu’man Abd al-Wahid

Nu’man Abd al-Wahid is the author of “Debunking the Myth of America’s Poodle.”

A book Professor Gerald Horne, author of White Supremacy Confronted has praised as:

“This illuminating, scalding and scorching takedown of British Imperialism is simultaneously a cautionary reminder that post-Brexit London should be pressured relentlessly in order to avoid a replication of its multiple sins and transgressions of the recent past.”

To purchase a copy click here.

***

[i] David Wearing, “AngloArabia: Why Gulf Wealth Matters to Britain” (London: Polity, 2018), pg.14

[ii] Michael Fisher, “Indirect Rule in India: Residents and the Residency System 1764-1858” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991) and Nu’man Abd al-Wahid, Debunking the Myth of America’s Poodle: Great Britain Wants War” (Winchester: Zero Books, 2020). Chapter 3 where connection between India and the Gulf is argued.

[iii] Wearing op. cit., pg.15

[iv] ibid

[v] ibid., pg.16

[vi] ibid., pg.18

[vii] Abd al-Wahid, op. cit., Chapter 6

[viii] Wearing op. cit., pg.23

[ix] ibid., pg24

[x] ibid., pg.25

[xi] Ibid., pg.83

[xii] ibid., pg.84-85

[xiii] ibid., pg.85

[xiv] ibid., pg.89

[xv] ibid., pg.90

[xvi] ibid., pg.100

[xvii] ibid., pg.101

[xviii] ibid., pg. 106

[xix] ibid., pg.149-150

[xx] ibid., pg.113

[xxi] ibid., pg.129

[xxii] ibid pg. 135

[xxiii] ibid pg.123

[xxiv] ibid., pg.148

[xxv] ibid pg.154

[xxvi] ibid., pg. 167

[xxvii] ibid., pg.177

[xxviii] ibid., pg.170

[xxix] ibid., pg.201

[xxx] ibid., pg.196

[xxxi] House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, “Libya: Examination of intervention and collapse and the UK’s future policy options”, House of Commons, 14 September 2016

[xxxii] Wearing, op. cit., pg.19 and pg.228 (note 26)

[xxxiii] David Jones, “The Degenerates of Dubai”, Daily Mail, 19th July 2008, pg. 10-11

[xxxiv] Wearing, op. cit., pg.137-8

[xxxv] ibid., pg.221

[xxxvi] Abd al-Wahid, “Debunking the Myth of America’s Poodle: Great Britain Wants War”, Chapter 6.

[xxxvii] Gerald Horne, “The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy and Capitalism in the Seventeenth Century North America and the Caribbean” (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2018), pg.11