58. On The Middle East in 1979. 

Dearly Beloved,

1979 was a turbulent year and the energy released by that turbulence continues to affect us. In relentlessly urban Shepherd's Bush in west London, our house had a view up the street and we often saw a lady with dyed red hair, who wore very short miniskirts. One day in February 1979 we noticed that her appearance had totally changed. Her hair was black, she wore a black Iranian Shia chador over her head and shoulders which covered a long black dress. A few days later her front garden filled with Shia clergymen wearing large turbans. Within days Ayatollah Khomeini returned from exile in France to Tehran, along with other exiled clergy, and he worked his way up to become Supreme Leader in Iran following the deposition of the Shah.

I was in Saudi Arabia later that year and on 20th November, my wife and I were invited to lunch by a Saudi colleague who was of the Otaiba tribe. During the lunch we noticed that everyone was glued to the radio. Towards the end of our visit, the brother of my colleague who was a student at the University of Mecca said “Today there has been some shootings”. There had indeed been some shootings, for a group of insurgents had taken over the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the Earthly focus of the Islamic religion. That had happened only 40 km from where we were lunching in Jeddah. The insurgents were led by Juhayman Al Otaibi who declared his brother-in-law, Mohammed Abdullah al-Qahtani, to be the Mahdi, or redeemer, who arrives on earth several years before Judgment Day. Some of the group were foreigners but the majority came from the Nejd to the East of Jeddah. They were small farmers and small holders living simple, ascetic lives who were identifiable by their ubiquitous beards and modest dress which revealed their lower shins, a symbol of their denial of luxury. At first the government claimed that the Shia' of the eastern province had been responsible for the attempted take over but the reality was the embarrassing fact that the insurrectionists were all Sunni, the same branch of Islam as the Al Saud themselves and indeed the leaders had familial links to the Ikwaan, the enthusiastic religious brotherhood that, over thirty years of zelous struggle, had conquered other tribes and leaders and brought Abdulaziz bin Saud to power in 1932.

In 1979 the elite Saudi force trying to force out the insurgents soon realised that they were not up to the task and called in the Pakistani and French governments who provided special forces who expelled the insurgents. The siege carried on much longer than expected but my wife and I knew when it was over because the commander of the Saudi forces lived opposite our flat and two sheep appeared, one each tied to the house gateposts. These were to be killed and eaten at a communal meal to celebrate his return home.

At that time Osama bin Laden was a student at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah. In later years he became obsessed with ousting foreigners from the Arabian peninsula. He talked of the peninsula because he wanted to disparage the legitimacy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to which he was opposed and whom he regarded as corrupt and because it harked back to the time of The Prophet when the entire Peninsula and many adjacent areas came under Arab, Islamic rule. It always seemed probable that his disposition resulted from the Mecca siege during which Muslims had been killed in the holiest place of Islam and furthermore some were killed by foreigners and unbelievers, who he would have believed, should not have been in Mecca in any case. There are two versions of events. One says that the French who entered the mosque were converted to Islam before hand by repeating the Arabic seven word statement of belief. The other version is that the French only advised and never entered the mosque itself.

A colleague of mine, who was in Kabul on Christmas eve 1979, later told me of the huge noise and flashes of light from the airport in Kabul as a battle for the airport broke out between Soviet Russian troops taking over Afghanistan in support of the communist government there. Osama bin Laden and other radicals like him were persuaded to leave Saudi Arabia to go and fight against the Soviet forces on behalf of Islam. After Soviet forces were driven out ten years later, there was some resistance to Osama staying in Saudi Arabia so instead he went to Sudan and started to plan violence against the West. The earliest intimation I had of what was to come was around 1990 when rumors could be heard that groups there were planning to blow up targets in Europe. All these disruptions were cast by the participants as conflict between western values and traditional ways of life, including Islamic values.

Many of the present political and religious tensions between Islamic countries and Western countries and Russia, can be traced back to the violence and revolutions of that turbulent year, 1979, a year that focused many simmering discontents as a magnifying glass can focus the sun's rays on a leaf of paper, first causing it to smoulder and then burst into flame.

Peace,

Paul.

Completed 7 August 2021


Soldiers from akhwan min taʽa allah Army on Camels carrying the Flags of the Third Saudi State, Flag of Saud dynasty, Flag of the Akhwan Army, 1911. The photographer is believed to have died at the battle of Jarab  in 1915.  Public Domain.Wikipedia.


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