MBS working on kingdom’s image
A beleaguered Saudi Arabia is taking modest steps to improve its human rights record as it tries to navigate the coronavirus pandemic and the fallout from plunging oil prices that have rankled the United States and the Trump administration.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, the force behind Saudi Arabia’s sweeping changes and risky gambles, is eyeing further steps he hopes will improve the kingdom’s international image, which was badly damaged by the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by government agents in 2018 and by the war in Yemen.
In the past week alone, the kingdom announced two changes to the law: banning flogging as a punishment and doing away with the death penalty for crimes committed by minors.
The crown prince, while transforming life inside Saudi Arabia, has overseen a parallel crackdown on activists and perceived critics. Among those detained in the prince’s quest to solidify power are dual US-Saudi nationals, women’s rights activists, writers, moderate clerics and senior princes.
Saudi Arabia’s already strained relationship with Congress has worsened in past weeks.
Republicans have accused Saudi Arabia of exacerbating instability in the oil market. That came after the kingdom ramped up oil production and slashed prices following a breakdown in talks with Russia over production cuts before a new deal was reached.
The volatility and price crash in oil, amid already weakened demand due to the coronavirus pandemic, pummelled US shale producers, leading to layoffs in the industry, particularly in Republican-run states.
Some Republican senators warned in late March that if Saudi Arabia does not change course, it risks losing American defence support and facing a range of potential ‘‘levers of statecraft’’ such as tariffs.
The backlash couldn’t have come at a worse time for the kingdom as tensions remain high with rival Iran.
Domestically, the crown prince’s reform efforts are aimed at modernising the country and creating millions of jobs to stave off an upswell in unemployment and discontent among the majority of the population, who are under the age of 35.
To do this, the crown prince has forged a friendship with Trump, his influential son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, courted foreign investors and used the country’s sovereign wealth fund to scoop up investments abroad. It has paid millions of dollars to Western public relations firms and consultancies to revamp Saudi Arabia’s image and put together a plan to diversify the oil- dependent economy.
That’s meant pivoting Saudi Arabia away from its ultraconservative Islamic roots, known as Wahhabism.
There’s no indication that Saudi Arabia is curbing the crackdown on perceived critics.
The killing of Khashoggi, a Saudi critic and columnist, in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by agents who worked for MBS cast a pall over the reforms the 34-year-old prince had been lauded for.
Members of Congress voted unanimously to hold the crown prince responsible for Khashoggi’s death, despite his insistence that he had no knowledge of the operation.
Not long after, Congress voted to end US assistance in Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen. Trump vetoed the bill.
Since Khashoggi’s killing, few US lawmakers have travelled to Saudi Arabia to meet Prince Mohammed. Progress on women’s rights, however, coincided with the arrest of more than a dozen Saudi women right’s activists in mid-2018. Several remain imprisoned. –