“Britain’s top military academy, Sandhurst, has come under fire for renaming a sports hall commemorating a First World War battle after the King of Bahrain. The Mons Hall – named after the 1914 battle where thousands died – will have its name changed to honour the Bahraini monarch who has given millions in funding to the Army’s officer training college. The building will now be called King Hamad Hall and will reopen next month after being refurbished thanks to a £3 million donation from the king, who is the patron of the Sandhurst Foundation but is known for brutally repressing demonstrators at home. Sandhurst has also accepted a £15 million donation from the United Arab Emirates to build a new accommodation block, raising questions about the college’s links with authoritarian Gulf states accused of human rights abuses………….”
Shaikh Hamad Bin Issa Bin Salman Al Khalifa, by the Grace of Al Saud arms and money and imported mercenaries from Pakistan and Jordan and Syria and and other places, King of Bahrain. Most of his people live in poverty since the resources of the state are taken by the rulers and their retainers. The regime now depends on financial aid from the richer GCC potentates. They use the money to import weapons and foreign mercenaries and to fund an expensive PR campaign centered in London and Washington. Notice how most of our Gulf potentates prefer PR and lobbying campaigns to reform and election campaign?
His un-majestic shaikh-king of Bahrain is reported to have bribed donated GBP 3 million to rename a sports hall at the British Sandhurst Military Academy, so that it will be named after himself. The name Mons Hall of the battle where so many died in the trenches will be removed, in favor of the name of a chubby little tribal despot.
I have read that Sandhurst has a special “soft” program for the sons of Arab kings, shaikhs, and other potentates who wish to be “graduates of Sandhurst”. It does not prepare them to tend bar at Claridge’s, but it gives their families the excuse to make them Field Marshals and Generals within a few months.
Why doesn’t Sandhurst follow in the footsteps of such other cash-strapped Western institutions of higher learning? Why not establish a branch in the Persian-American Gulf region for the scions of the potentates? If the Sorbonne and NYU can pretend that it has a “branch” on the Gulf, why not a Sandhurst on the Gulf?
Cheers
mhg