LITTLE SADDAM
Reformer? No, an unstable despot whose bloodlust threatens the entire Middle East. No wonder they call him
AT LEAST the fate of Jamal Khashoggi is now beyond doubt, even if the terrible details are yet to emerge in full. Saudi Arabia has finally confirmed that the missing journalist was killed inside its Istanbul consulate and alleges, implausibly, that he died in a fist fight that somehow went wrong.
How unfortunate for Mr Khashoggi, a dissident writer and thorn in the side of the regime, that he should pick a quarrel with 15 trained thugs, including bodyguards to the ruling Saudi elite and a forensics expert armed with a bone saw.
In contrast, the gruesome account of his death leaked by the Turkish authorities seems overwhelmingly likely: that the 59-year-old, soon to be married, was lured into the consulate, where he was dismembered alive and decapitated by a ‘tiger team’ flown into the country especially for the purpose.
No doubt in the coming days we will receive further distressing news from the Turks – that, for example, the freshly painted walls in the consulate show traces of Mr Khashoggi’s blood.
A major search of the woodland near Istanbul might very well reveal his body parts. Why else would a Saudi consular vehicle head in that direction, wrenching out and discarding its satellite tracking equipment on the way?
YET none of this can explain the reckless brutality of a murder which, as John Sawers, the former head of British intelligence agency MI6, has said, was clearly ordered from the top by the Crown Prince and de facto leader of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed Bin Salman.
The diplomatic and reputational consequences have been hugely damaging for the Kingdom.
The first explanation is that Mr Khashoggi was seen as a particular threat. Not only was he an exceptionally well-informed insider, a member of the Riyadh establishment – he had been an adviser to the Saudi security services – but he was a vocal critic of the current regime through his regular column in the Washington Post.
Significantly, Mr Khashoggi was a patron of a new online platform called the Bee Army, an encrypted messaging system for dissidents both outside and inside the Kingdom, with a particular space for Saudis to post their grievances about corruption.
There is growing evidence that the 33-year-old Crown Prince, who presents himself as a reformer, is fast becoming an irrational, unstable despot to rival the late Saddam Hussein.
Worried Kuwaitis already call him ‘little Saddam’, fearing that he, too, has plans to invade their vulnerable emirate.
As early as December 2015, the BND, the German equivalent of MI6, took the highly unusual step of releasing a report about generational change in the Saudi leadership. It warned that power was being concentrated in the hands of Bin Salman, then the defence minister and Deputy Crown Prince. It also predicted he would attempt to succeed his father as king, and that he would use that platform to become a Saddam-style leader of the Arab world.
As a result, the Saudis, who have often been seen as a valuable pro-Western ally, would abandon past caution in favour of a destabilising regional role. Worse, the BND feared he was a gambler who would use military might to get his way. This was an odd statement for an intelligence service to release, particularly given the strong commercial relationship between the two countries (Germany, like the US and Britain, sells arms to Saudi Arabia). Unless, that is, the agency had access to clear and worrying evidence.
I HAVE been told by a member of another Gulf ruling house that the BND got its hands on Bin Salman’s medical history after he was treated for epilepsy in Germany as a teenager – including psychiatric records that have led to such concern about his state of mind.
The BND was right about Bin Salman’s ambitions. With the Prime Minister, his 82-year-old father King Salman, suffering from Alzheimer’s, Bin Salman took over as Crown Prince and Deputy Prime Minister last year.
Now, it seems, the Germans are being proved right about his stability. Under Bin Salman, the Saudis’ ongoing war in Yemen has been conducted without any regard for the 10,000 civilian casualties or the risk of 11 million people starving to death.
In November last year, he detained the Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri, who is a Saudi dual national, in Riyadh to force him to resign in revenge for not containing the rising influence of Iranian-backed Hezbollah.
The same month, Bin Salman organised the notorious ‘sheikhdown’ in Riyadh’s Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Some 150 members of Saudi Arabia’s political and business elite were invited to a major international investors conference at the palatial hotel, then held there by armed guards until they agreed to pay €100bn Bin Salman says the country was owed. Sundry Saudi billionaires were abused and in some cases tortured. At least one army general died of a broken neck, while several reformers (former economics or finance ministers) have completely disappeared.
Every rival to Bin Salman has been purged, notably the previous Crown Prince, his cousin Mohammed Bin Nayef, who had strong Western security links.
Bin Salman has been hoping to prompt Donald Trump to wage a potentially catastrophic war against Iran, something the Israelis and Saudis want to bring about.
HE has come close to invading Qatar because of its global pretensions, settling instead for an economic blockade.
The Saudis are planning to separate Qatar physically from Saudi Arabia by spending $700m on a huge canal, leaving just enough room for a toxic nuclear waste dump on the border. The regional Gulf Co-operation Council alliance lies in ruins, with Bahrain, the Emirates and Saudi Arabia on one side, and Kuwait, Oman and Qatar on the other.
All of this brings us back to Mr Khashoggi, who opposed the isolation of Qatar and challenged the entire notion of the new Crown Prince as a reformer.
All eyes are now on Washington, where President Trump finally seems to accept that Mr Khashoggi has been murdered. (His own security services will hold intercepts of calls from the killers in Ankara to Riyadh, likely to be damning.)
We can expect to see the murder team put on Specially Designated Nationals lists – blocking their assets and banning them from the US – while informal pressure will be applied on King Salman to clip his son’s wings.
The Crown Prince, meanwhile, will try to blame rogue subordinates. Five officials have reportedly been fired, and 18 people arrested. A major general called Assiri is being lined up as the chief fall-guy, though his sinister head of personal security Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb was also photographed in Istanbul at the time of the killing.
Normally there is no problem that Saudi Arabia can’t buy itself out of. This is different. A consulate has been used to commit murder. At a minimum Western countries should expel all Saudi military attaches and spies.