Given this accidental quality Arab acquiescence seems all the more shameful

Given this accidental quality, Arab acquiescence seems all the more shameful.Aburish may be quirky – having condemned “commission-skimming” arms-brokers, he suddenly reveals himself as one of their number – yet it is his keen eye for personal foibles, and the psychological background to political developments, which brings the book to life. Thus Britain’s Harry Philby and the CIA’s Miles Copeland could change history merely by exploiting personal ties with their Arab “pets”. “I enjoy doing Ligeti and Gilbert and Sullivan so close together. Any singer’s career throws up unlikely juxtapositions, but for Suart this is something more than the random couplings of a busy performance schedule.

The most obvious example is Saddam himself, who eventually bit the Western hand that had fed him with arms. Aburish unveils an entire hidden history of mendacity, as the CIA nurtured the young thug in the Sixties as their secret weapon against the anti-Western Iraqi leader Kassem.Curiously enough, Western powers follow no Machiavellian master-plan, but rely on the improvisations of field officers and PR agents. The average Saudi soldier costs five times as much to maintain as his US equivalent, but poor training renders him useless in battle. And the Arab-Israeli peace process, Aburish warns, is doomed unless and until the parties heed the voices of ordinary people.”Arming friends” – such as Britain’s multi-billion weapons supply to Saudi Arabia – is equally short-sighted. Now that London has become “the new capital of the Middle East”, Arab corruption has started “infecting the hosts” – witness Jonathan Aitken.

From Britain encouraging the slaying of popular King Ghazi of Iraq in 1938 to the CIA instigating coup after coup in Syria, such interventions “almost became a bad habit”. Then comes another, somewhat paradoxical argument: apart from being immoral, to mollycoddle dictators is to endanger long-term Western interests. The “street”, he implies, is always right, and whichever leader it adopts is therefore legitimate. Even bogey figures such as Saddam Hussein do better than King Fahd when it comes to spending on education or economic development.
Aburish accuses the West of moulding the Arab world to further its own interests, handpicking minority elements and criminals as leaders while denying Arab people their basic rights.

Francis has raided his address book for celebrity MCs (next week it’s Roy Hattersley, discuss) but tonight is your last chance to catch Dawn French in full flight A friend observed, tartly, “it’s Sondheim’s best show”. It isn’t, but there are times when they make you believe that’s true Hurry on down.Booking: 0181-858 7755 To 6 Sept. From the opening sentence of A Brutal Friendship, it is clear that Said Aburish intends to be the Emile Zola of Araby. “There are no legitimate regimes in the Arab Middle East”, he states; and few escape his ire. He spares neither Whitehall mandarins, nor mendacious arms dealers, nor Israeli-sponsored think-tanks, nor wheeler-dealer CIA agents, nor well-tailored Arabs in London’s “Beirut-on-Thames”. Not even that perennial British favourite, “plucky little” King Hussein of Jordan, emerges unscathed. As if to clinch the point, the gruesome dustjacket shows two hands shaking, one smeared in oil, the other in blood.