Astute royal diplomat

The Prince ” The Secret Story Of The World™s Most Intriguing Royal by William Simpson Harper Collins; Price: Rs.670; Pages 480
The Al Saud dynasty which rules the kingdom of Saudi Arabia ” the world™s largest producer of crude oil and petroleum which greatly enhanced its power and wealth (per capita income: $52,800 PPP per year) ” is not of ancient vintage. The house of Al Saud established the modern nation that is Saudi Arabia (pop. 31 million) less than a century ago.
Before that, it was a sparsely populated peninsula of nomadic tribes, among whom was the Al Saud clan from central Arabia. From the mid-18th century onward, this tribe driven by the fierce absolutism of Wahhabi Islam, became aggressively expansionist, and over the next century its territorial boundaries expanded. Between 1902-1927, Al Saud leader, Abdulaziz, led several wars of conquest which resulted in the creation of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932.
The new kingdom would have remained a poor and backward desert society mainly dependent on religious tourism (Mecca and Medina ” the most revered pilgrimage destinations of the world™s 2.5 billion Muslims ” are sited within its geographical borders) but for King Abdulaziz. Undoubtedly driven by divine inspiration, he granted Standard Oil of California (Socal), later renamed Chevron, the right to prospect for oil in the new kingdom.
In 1938, Socal discovered large quantities of oil in the Dammam Dome near the Arabian Gulf. In the late 1940s, Socal entered into a consortium with other American oil companies under the name and style of the Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco). By the 1970s, Saudi Arabia had become the top producer and exporter of oil in the world. In 1980 the government assumed full ownership of Aramco, renaming it Saudi Aramco.
Under a concordat with the fiercely puritanical Wahhabi clergy in the oil-rich country, the Saudi princes enjoy hedonistic lifestyles at home and abroad, which are beyond the most fervid imagination of the authors of the Arabian Nights.
Naturally the fabulous wealth, and especially the money-spewing oil fields of Saudi Arabia needed security and protection from poor neighbour and distant countries who envied the superb public infrastructure built by foreign managers (mainly white) and workers (mainly from the Indian subcontinent) for this monarchy, whose native citizens were little more than idle bystanders. Therefore, driven by survival instincts and perpetuation of dictatorial patriarchy in Arab societies, the monarchy and its government have invested substantial proportions of the kingdom™s cornucopia into diplomacy, arms and defence infrastructure, and foreign affairs under the protective umbrella of the United States.
It™s against this backdrop that an almost unknown biography of Prince Bandar Bin Sultan by William Simpson, a classmate of Bandar at the Royal Air Force College, Cranwell and former hedge fund manager, which your reviewer picked up from the back shelves of an airport book store, assumes significance. It sheds revealing light upon the hectic backroom manoeuvres of petrodollars-laden emissaries of the Saudi monarchy to wield power and influence behind the scenes of international diplomacy.
Although the son of Prince Sultan, one of the seven favoured progeny of King Ibn Saud, in his childhood Bandar suffered the ignominy of being the outcome of his father™s liaison with a œdark-skinned 16-year-old commoner concubine. Nevertheless, he was classified as a royal and this biography draws a vivid account of how he won his father™s favour, was sent to the Royal Air Force College to qualify as fighter pilot, and served in the Royal Saudi Air Force where he rose to the position of squadron commander. In 1978, he œunexpectedly became immersed in Saudi negotiations with the Carter administration to purchase 60 F-15s (advanced fighter aircraft) as also AWACS (airborne warning and control system) airplanes, a transaction stridently opposed by Israel and the US Congress.
After this deal was skilfully negotiated, Prince Bandar found his true metier as a shrewd lobbyist and diplomat, displaying his talent by charming US presidents Ford, Carter, George Bush Sr, and Clinton as well as a host of other world leaders including Margaret Thatcher and Nelson Mandela.
In 1985, Prince Bandar was officially appointed Saudi Arabia™s ambassador to the United States, the kingdom™s most valuable ally and petroleum consumer. He served in this vitally important position for over 20 years and played a critical role in three landmark events which changed the course of world history ” the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan (1979-89), Iraq™s invasion of and expulsion from Kuwait (1990-91) and the 9/11, 2001 terrorist attack in New York.
In the US, perhaps worldwide, it was an open secret that the Afghan Mujahideen who were in the vanguard of the guerrilla war against the œGodless Soviets, were heavily funded by Saudi Arabia. Indeed, according to the author the Saudi royals were œco-funding the armament of the Afghan rebels dollar for dollar with the United States, a vast cascade of cash and armaments which won the war in Afghanistan.
Likewise following Iraq™s invasion of Kuwait on August 2,1990 which took everyone, including Bandar, by surprise, Bandar persuaded King Fahd to allow the US to deploy 50,000 ground troops to Saudi Arabia. This enabled General Schwarzkopf, head of an American-led coalition, to launch a ground and air offensive (Operation Desert Storm) on February 24 (1991) to drive the Iraqi army out of Kuwait œwith ease, suffering only 79 fatalities and 1,200 wounded.
Success in warfare and statecraft established Bandar™s reputation as an astute and persuasive diplomat. According to the author, the prince™s hectic jetting around the world in the 1990s brought Israel and the Palestinian state almost to the verge of signing a peace treaty.
Except that on September 9, 2001, 19 terrorists hijacked three commercial airliners flying out of Boston and rammed two of them into the Pan Am twin towers in New York, and one almost into the Pentagon. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals. How Prince Bandar managed this unprecedented crisis which threatened to rupture US-Saudi ties and countered hostile media and public opinion in the US, is recounted in an engaging chapter titled Cataclysm.
With the development of shale fracking technology which has sharply reduced global crude oil prices, Saudi Arabia™s influence in world affairs is indisputably on the wane. With the Saudi royals not having invested sufficiently in education even as the country boasts one of the world™s youngest populations, the clock has begun ticking for the Ibn Saud dynasty. The Prince offers penetrating insights into the lifestyles of a royalty stubbornly resistant to change, and hidden behind an iron keffiyeh.
Dilip Thakore
Rumi made easy
Rumi (sufi comics) by Mohammed Ali Vakil, Mohammed Arif Vakil, Tanzilur Rahman Sufi Studios; Price: Rs.250; Pages: 144
His appeal is universal, transcending religion, class and ethnicity. His poetry resonates across castes and creeds. Seven centuries after his death, Maulana Jalaluddin Muhammad Balkhi, popularly known as Rumi, is among the world™s most loved poets and mystics. Trained as a religious scholar and jurist, Rumi™s meeting with Shams Tabrizi, who became his spiritual master, marked a complete transformation in his life, enriching him as he rose to fame as the most charismatic of Sufi poets, with devoted followers around the world.
Rumi™s magnum opus is the Masnavi-e Manavi (˜Rhyming Couplets of Profound Spiritual Meaning™), a beautiful collection of mystically-inspired poems. It is considered to be among the gems of world literature, and has been translated into numerous languages. It focuses on guiding disciples onto the Sufi path to reach the goal of spiritual fulfillment.
Some years ago, a group of friends in Bangalore got together to produce Sufi-related literature in graphic form, using contemporary idioms to reach Rumi™s message to a broader cross-section of society. This beautifully-crafted book ” in itself a lyrical work of art ” is their third publication, offering deeper insight into his teachings.
Rumi™s Masnavi-e Manavi comprises six books of poetry, and some 25,000 verses aggregating around 50,000 lines. If you don™t have the resources or time or even the inclination to read all of it, you can at least savour some samples from this easy-to-read illustrated book.
In addition to a chapter describing in brief some important events in Rumi™s life, this book offers ten ˜episodes™ from Masnavi-e Manavi, based on selected verses from the text. The chosen verses are woven together to form entertaining and instructive stories.
Using motifs and human experiences that all of us ” even now, centuries after Rumi left the world to meet his Maker ” can identify with, each story highlights a profound spiritual truth. These truths add up to a spiritual journey stressing love of God, sublimation of the ego, temperance and forbearance, among other virtues.
In a straight-to-the-heart way, Rumi continues to inspire people to ponder the purpose of life, and reflect upon how they should lead their lives. In the story ˜Tattoo Artist™ for instance, we learn of a man who asked a barber to tattoo a lion on his shoulder. The barber begins his work, only to be told by the man, each time he starts imprinting the lion™s form, to stop as the pain is excruciating. The frustrated barber finally throws away the tattoo needle, saying he™s never heard of a lion without a tail or head or stomach, and that God Himself couldn™t create a lion like that! The moral of the story, Rumi points out, is that to escape from the œpoison of our œdark soul, we have to bear the œpain of the needle.
Another of the several delightful Rumi parables highlights the futility of religious and communal conflict. It centres around a quarrel over a bunch of grapes. A man gives a Persian, an Arab, a Turk and a Greek a coin each to buy grapes. But because they call grapes by different names in their respective languages, each of them thinks that what the others want are not grapes but something else! In their madness, Rumi tells us, they start fighting because they don™t pause to reflect œthe hidden meaning of names, being œempty of true knowledge and filled with ignorance. Had an authentic mystic master, proficient in many languages, been present, the men would have been pacified. He would have said to them: œI can give you everything you want with this one coin, if you give me your heart sincerely without pretence. œYour one coin will become four, he would have explained, adding: œAll you say only produces struggle and separation; what I tell you brings harmony.
Each poem-story is part of Sufi lore, luxuriously illustrated, and accompanied by lines from the Quran (penned in original Arabic and exquisite calligraphic style) and their English translation, that has the same message as the poem.
Rumi was deeply immersed in the Islamic tradition, and his Masnavi-e Manavi has more than 2,000 references to the Quran. In addition, this graphic narrative offers short, spiritually uplifting utterances of Prophet Muhammad and Imam Ali which reinforce the message of the poems.
This book is a gem, and everyone who has invested time, money and effort in its production deserves gratitude and thanks.
Roshan Shah