They export extremist ideology which menaces Britain’s national security. The hatred that is manufactured and disseminated within their kingdoms threatens the safety and indeed lives of everyone reading this article. From Saudi Arabia to Kuwait, they are key allies and partners of the British government, and the Tories are endeavouring to forge ever closer links with these despotic exporters of fanaticism. And now these same Tories are sitting on a report given to them last year which examines the foreign funding of extremists in the UK. After three murderous Islamist extremists attacks in the space of a few months, this is nothing short of a national scandal.
The Green MP Caroline Lucas is right to question whether the failure to publish the report is because of criticisms made of the government’s Saudi allies. The British people – traumatised by repeated atrocities which deliberately targeted innocent civilians – have the right to know whether their government’s friends are putting their lives at risk. The failure to publish the report will fuel a suspicion that the Tories prioritise diplomatic ties and economic interests over the national security of this country.
Indeed, last year a leaked German intelligence report found that Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar were backing extremist Islamist groups. Such extremism was being nurtured and promoted through a network of hardline preachers, mosques and religious schools. Qatar has been widely accused of supporting the extremist Al-Nusra Front in Syria. A leaked US state department memo in 2014 was blunt: the Qatari and Saudi regimes “are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to Isis and other radical groups in the region”. And the Saudis themselves are at the absolute epicentre of exporting extremist ideology – and the kingdom has long been a source of funds for murderous groups.
Thousands of lives across the world have been lost at the hands of these extremists: the vast majority of the victims are Muslims in Arab nations. But the risk of Islamist terrorism in Britain is on the rise, partly because of the west’s catastrophic foreign policy from Iraq to Libya, partly because of a hateful ideology exported by the head-chopping Saudi regime and other Gulf regimes. The government must immediately release this report. If it fails to do so, it will rightly stand accused of placing a higher value on its alliance with murderous despots than the security of its own people. And that should scandalise us all.