PR offensive not enough to save this Saudi prince

Mohammed bin Salman will need more than boxing matches to keep his hold on power, writes Roger Boyes.

THERE’S a staple of the horror story genre: the stench of a corpse wafting up from under the floorboards. In politics, as in the pages of Stephen King, the discomfited home-owner has a choice of digging up the source of the problem or distracting visitors with air fresheners. Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, has gone for diversion tactics and deployed an army of public relations advisers to bury the memory of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, killed and dismembered in a Saudi consulate just over a year ago. The latest wheeze was on display last weekend – a hastily erected 15,000-seater stadium to stage Anthony Joshua’s heavyweight and heavy-pursed boxing match. It was Prince Mohammed’s way of shouting out ‘‘Nothing to see here, people, move along please’’.

Ultimately, though, all this razzmatazz could expose the weakness of Prince Mohammed (known as MBS) rather than his strength. Saudi sportswashing isn’t confined to boxing. The kingdom is presenting itself as a venue for top wrestling, car-rallying, golf and snooker events. Soon every big sport, lured by cash, will be persuaded to make a Saudi event part of its repertoire. Money will buy, if not trust, then at least a sense of parity with other sporting nations. And what’s good for sports is good for geopolitics: Saudi Arabia has just taken over the G20 chairmanship which it sees as a chance to project itself as the leader of the Arab world.

Over the past year in the US alone the Saudi government, the royal court and its associated companies shelled out US$32 million (NZ$48m) on PR advice and lobbyists to make this happen. Some PR firms dropped out after the Khashoggi killing but the Saudis simply responded by shopping round for spin doctors with stronger stomachs – or fewer scruples. A remarkable new book, The Killing in the Consulate, by investigative reporter Jonathan Rugman, peels away the layers of deceit used by the Saudis to hide any link between the murder and MBS. He tells of a Skype link set up between the hit squad and Prince Mohammed’s trusted adviser, Saud al-Qahtani. The message was crisp and to the point: ‘‘Tell your boss.’’ Under advice, MBS eventually conceded that he carried some generalised responsibility as a leader but qualified it by suggesting that the killers were only a dozen or so of ‘‘the three million people who work for me’’.

There is plainly still a need for damage limitation and a rebranding not just of the country but of the

Saudi leadership itself. Increasingly, the fundamentals of MBS’s rule no longer add up. Yes, there is broad global interest in a Saudi Arabia that allows its society to modernise, that lives at peace with its neighbours, that de-radicalises its preachers and that distances itself from terrorism. All this was part of the package presented to the world by MBS as he emerged as the undisputed heir to the throne of King Salman.

Oil markets need a stable Saudi Arabia. Yet MBS finds himself stuck in the situation of Louis XVI: even modest top-to-bottom change can lead to the guillotine. To achieve his Vision 2030 of social reform and high-tech transformation he needs to free up cash by selling off chunks of the formidable state-owned oil giant, Aramco, and attracting foreign investors. But to carry that off he has to show he can innovate without destabilising his country. And so he locks up critics, thereby unifying an expatriate opposition. It is ideologically diverse, cross-sectarian and women play a prominent role: exactly the kind of critical free-thinking opposition that was being promoted by Khashoggi. The result: the feeding of the prince’s paranoia and a sense abroad that Saudi Arabia won’t be able to guarantee the investments that it is seeking. Last year many politicians and business leaders failed to turn up to MBS’s annual ‘‘Davos of the Desert’’ summit because it was too soon after Khashoggi’s death. This year, many more came but they seemed to be interested chiefly in fee income for new fundraising rather than investing in the kingdom.

The western axis with the Saudis, based as it is on huge supplies of weapons for wars that never seem to be won, may not be as solid as it’s cracked up to be. MBS certainly doesn’t treat Vladimir Putin as an ideological enemy. And he even looks to China as a model for how an economy can be modernised without introducing democracy. Certainly he is interested in Chinese surveillance technology and the use of facial recognition cameras. Nor does it bother the prince that this is being road-tested on the locked-up Uighur Muslims of Xianjing province. There hasn’t been a squeak of criticism of Chinese anti-Muslim practices from the Saudi leadership.

What counts for MBS, then, is effectiveness of popular control, the refinement of police state techniques, rather than leading his citizens towards a more open, empowered society. Liberal reformers sense that this is his direction of travel and fear that Vision 2030 could be Dystopia 2030. They hate him for locking up campaigners for women’s rights so that he can claim to be the pace-setter of change. And for jailing bloggers and patrolling social media.

Religious conservatives, meanwhile, hate the way he is Americanising Saudi culture with cinemas and rock concerts. The poor can see that modernisation may leave them out in the cold; the rich are afraid of another shake-down at the Ritz Carlton hotel. Hardliners see him as an erratic military commander. No one really knows where he is taking Saudi Arabia. All they can see is a frightened man in a hurry, hastening towards the quicksands.