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.

 


13 killed as Russia pummels Ukraine with biggest ever drone attack

Updated 25 May 2025
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13 killed as Russia pummels Ukraine with biggest ever drone attack

  • Ukraine’s emergency services described a night of “terror” amid a second straight night of massive Russian air strikes, including on the capital Kyiv

KYIV, Ukraine: Russia launched a record number of drones against Ukraine, killing 13 people across the country, officials said Sunday, even as Kyiv and Moscow completed their biggest prisoner exchange since the start of the war.
Ukraine’s emergency services described a night of “terror” amid a second straight night of massive Russian air strikes, including on the capital Kyiv.
The attacks came as the two countries completed their biggest prisoner swap since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, with 1,000 captured soldiers and civilian prisoners sent back by each side.
Those killed in the latest Russian strikes included two children, aged eight and 12, and a 17-year-old, killed in the northwestern region of Zhytomyr, officials said.
Their school named the dead children as Roman, Tamara and Stanislav in a post on Facebook, saying: “Their memory will always be with us. We will never forgive.”
“Without truly strong pressure on the Russian leadership, this brutality cannot be stopped,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media.
“The silence of America, the silence of others around the world only encourages Putin,” he said, adding: “Sanctions will certainly help.”
The European Union’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, called for “the strongest international pressure on Russia to stop this war.”
“Last night’s attacks again show Russia bent on more suffering and the annihilation of Ukraine. Devastating to see children among innocent victims harmed and killed,” she said on social media.
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul also denounced the attacks. “Putin does not want peace, he wants to carry on the war and we shouldn’t allow him to do this,” he said.
“For this reason we will approve further sanctions at a European level.”
The strikes came after Russia launched 14 ballistic missiles and 250 drones overnight Friday to Saturday, which wounded 15 people, according to Ukrainian officials.
Ukraine’s military said on Sunday it had shot down a total of 45 Russian missiles and 266 attack drones overnight.
Air force spokesman Yuriy Ignat said 298 drones were launched, adding that this was “the highest number ever.”
Four people were also reported dead in Ukraine’s western Khmelnytskyi region, four in the Kyiv region.
Two people died in the Mykolaiv region. On Sunday evening Vitaliy Kim, governor of the southern region, said the body of a second person had been recovered from the rubble.
Emergency services said 16 people were injured in the Kyiv region, including three children, in the “massive night attack.”
“We saw the whole street was on fire,” a 65-year-old retired woman, Tetiana Iankovska, told AFP in Markhalivka village just southwest of Kyiv.
Russia said its strikes were aimed at Ukraine’s “military-industrial complex” and that it had brought down 110 Ukrainian drones.
Flights at Moscow airports suffered temporary closures due to Ukrainian drone activity but no injuries were reported, officials said.
Russia also said it had exchanged another 303 Ukrainian prisoners of war for the same number of Russian soldiers held by Kyiv — the last phase of a swap agreed during talks in Istanbul on May 16.
Russia and Ukraine had over three days “carried out the exchange of 1,000 people for 1,000 people,” the defense ministry said.
Zelensky confirmed the swap was complete.
Both sides received 390 people in the first stage on Friday and 307 on Saturday.
US President Donald Trump on Friday congratulated the two countries for the swap.
“This could lead to something big,” he wrote on social media.
Trump’s efforts to broker a ceasefire in Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II have so far been unsuccessful, despite his pledge to rapidly end the fighting.
An AFP reporter saw some of the formerly captive Ukrainian soldiers arrive at a hospital in the northern Chernigiv region, emaciated but smiling and waving to crowds.
“It’s simply crazy. Crazy feelings,” 31-year-old Konstantin Steblev, a soldier, told AFP Friday as he stepped back onto Ukrainian soil after three years in captivity.
One former captive, 58-year-old Viktor Syvak, told AFP was overcome by the emotional homecoming.
Captured in the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, he had been held for 37 months and 12 days. “It’s impossible to describe. I can’t put it into words. It’s very joyful,” he said of the release.


French authorities blame sabotage for second power blackout

Updated 25 May 2025
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French authorities blame sabotage for second power blackout

  • Prosecutors said they had opened an investigation and were looking into a claim Sunday by two anarchist groups of “responsibility for the attack on electrical installations on the Cote d’Azur”

NICE, France: French authorities on Sunday blamed sabotage and ordered heightened security after a fire at an electricity sub-station in Nice caused the second major power blackout in two days along the Riviera.
The latest fire cut power to about 45,000 homes in western Nice for several hours, authorities said. Nice airport was briefly without electricity, the city’s deputy mayor Gael Nofri told AFP.
A similar arson attack on a power substation on Saturday partially disrupted the final day of the Cannes film festival, forcing organizers to use backup generators to keep the event going.
Prosecutors said they had opened an investigation and were looking into a claim Sunday by two anarchist groups of “responsibility for the attack on electrical installations on the Cote d’Azur.” The claim was posted on an alternative website.
“I vigorously condemn these criminal acts hitting our country,” Nice mayor Christian Estrosi said on X.
“We are making images from our monitoring center available to investigators and will strengthen the city’s network at strategic electrical sites in coming days,” he added.
“Until the perpetrators of these acts have been arrested, we will not ease up our attention anywhere,” Estrosi told reporters.
Nice’s chief prosecutor Damien Martinelli said studies had been carried out “to clarify the damage and the methods used to carry out the act” and that police were investigating “arson by an organized group.”
Police said that tire marks had been found near the Nice transformer and someone had broken into a room in the building.
An arson attack at a power substation and a bid to cut the legs of an electricity pylon near Cannes cut power to 160,000 homes in the region for five hours on Saturday.
The cut knocked out traffic lights and bank machines in Cannes, as well as threatening the finale to the film festival.
The festival “switched to an alternative electricity power supply” to keep the closing ceremony and award events going.
Firefighters battled for five hours to put out the flames at the sub-station, officials said.
In the attack on the high-voltage pylon, three of its four legs had been damaged, said prosecutors.
 

 


More sanctions against Russia needed, deep concern about Gaza: German minister

Updated 25 May 2025
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More sanctions against Russia needed, deep concern about Gaza: German minister

  • “Germany has a clear position: no expulsions (of the Palestinian population) from the Gaza Strip, an end to hunger
  • Russian forces launched a barrage of 367 drones and missiles at Ukrainian cities overnight, including at the capital Kyiv, in the largest aerial attack of the war so far, killing at least 12 people and injuring dozens more, officials said

BERLIN: Russia’s latest wave of attacks on Ukraine should be answered with additional Western sanctions, Germany’s Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul told public broadcaster ARD on Sunday.
“(Russian President Vladimir) Putin is not interested in peace, he wants to continue this war, and we must not allow this, which is why the European Union will agree additional sanctions,” he said in a live interview on ARD’s Bericht aus Berlin.
Russian forces launched a barrage of 367 drones and missiles at Ukrainian cities overnight, including at the capital Kyiv, in the largest aerial attack of the war so far, killing at least 12 people and injuring dozens more, officials said.
Wadephul added that the United States was also able to launch new sanctions packages, and he hoped that the weight of the measures would get Putin to the negotiating table, to avoid what he called potentially severe consequences for Russia’s economy and energy sectors.
Moving on to Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, Wadephul said Germany was deeply concerned about the “unbearable” human suffering, where he said he was in touch with Israeli, Middle Eastern and European peers, to seek to broker solutions.
“Germany has a clear position: no expulsions (of the Palestinian population) from the Gaza Strip, an end to hunger. And the Strip as well as the West Bank belong to the Palestinians, on the way to a two-state solution,” he said.
Israeli military strikes killed at least 23 Palestinians across the Gaza Strip on Sunday, including a local journalist and a senior rescue service official, local health authorities said.

 


US military spent $6 billion in the past 3 years to recruit and retain troops

Updated 25 May 2025
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US military spent $6 billion in the past 3 years to recruit and retain troops

WASHINGTON: The US military spent more than $6 billion over the past three years to recruit and retain service members, in what has been a growing campaign to counter enlistment shortfalls.

The financial incentives to reenlist in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines increased dramatically from 2022 through last year, with the Navy vastly outspending the others, according to funding totals provided by the services. The overall amount of recruiting bonuses also rose steadily, fueled by significant jumps in spending by the Army and Marine Corps.

The military services have routinely poured money into recruiting and retention bonuses over the years. But the totals spiked as Pentagon leaders tried to reverse falling enlistment numbers, particularly as COVID-19 restrictions locked down public events, fairs and school visits that recruiters relied on to meet with young people. Coupled with an array of new programs, an increased number of recruiters and adjustments to enlistment requirements, the additional incentives have helped the services bounce back from the shortfalls. All but the Navy met their recruiting targets last year and all are expected to do so this year.

Officials have tied them more directly to the widespread overhauls that the services have done, including the increased financial incentives.

The Army, the military’s largest service, spent more on recruiting bonuses in 2022 and 2024 than the other services. But it was significantly outspent by the Navy in 2023, when the sea service was struggling to overcome a large enlistment shortfall.

As a result, even though the Navy is a smaller service, it spent more overall in the three years than the Army did.

The Navy also has spent considerably more than the others to entice sailors to reenlist, doling out retention bonuses to roughly 70,000 service members for each of the past three years. That total is more than double the number of troops the Army gave retention bonuses to each year, even though the Army is a much larger service.

“Navy is dedicated to retaining our most capable sailors; retention is a critical component of achieving our end-strength goals,” Adm. James Kilby, the vice chief of naval operations, told a Senate Armed Services subcommittee in March.

He said reenlistment for enlisted sailors “remains healthy,” but officers are a challenge in specific jobs, including aviation, explosive ordnance disposal, surface and submarine warfare, health professionals and naval special operations. He added that the Navy has struggled to fill all of its at-sea jobs and is using financial incentives as one way to combat the problem.

The Army has seen the greatest recruiting struggles over the past decade, and by using a range of new programs and policies, has had one of the largest comebacks. The Navy has had the most trouble more recently, and took a number of steps to expand those eligible for service and spend more in bonuses.

While the Army spends hundreds of millions each year to recruit troops, it also has relied on an array of new programs and policies to woo young people. A key driver of the Army’s rebound has been its decision to create the Future Soldier Prep Course, at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, in August 2022.

That program gives lower-performing recruits up to 90 days of academic or fitness instruction to help them meet military standards and move on to basic training. It has resulted in thousands of enlistments.


Council of Europe defends court against criticism over expulsions

Updated 25 May 2025
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Council of Europe defends court against criticism over expulsions

ROME: The Council of Europe has defended the independence of the European Court of Human Rights, after nine member states said its interpretation of rights obligations prevented them from expelling migrants who commit crimes.

In a joint letter made public, leaders of Denmark, Italy, Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland called for a “new and open-minded conversation” about how the court interprets the European Convention on Human Rights.

“Their concern centers on rulings in the field of migration,” Council of Europe Secretary-General Alain Berset said in a statement. “These are complex challenges, and democracies must always remain open to reflection through the appropriate institutional avenues.”

However, Berset stressed that the European Court of Human Rights “is not an external body” but the legal arm of the Council of Europe, and is “bound by a Convention that all 46 members have freely signed and ratified.”

“It exists to protect the rights and values they committed to defend,” he said. “Upholding the independence and impartiality of the Court is our bedrock.”

He warned against politicizing the court.

The nine European leaders said the court’s interpretation of the convention in cases concerning the expulsion of “criminal foreign nationals” has protected the “wrong people” and placed too many limits on deciding who can be expelled.

The Council of Europe is not an EU institution and was set up in the wake of the Second World War to promote peace and democracy.