RETALIATE? NOT WHILE WE’RE ADDICTED TO THEIR BILLIONS
From an author who spent years in Saudi working with murdered writer
ON A typically sunny Friday morning in Jeddah, I found myself driving past the city’s biggest mosque, the vast car park of which doubled as the city’s ‘chop- chop square’ where executions were a frequent occurrence.
Friday prayers had just ended, and the crowd gathering outside was surrounded by police cars with their lights flashing. It could mean only one thing. I joined the throng just in time to see two Bangladeshi men – blindfolded and with their hands tied behind their backs – being forced to kneel on the ground. Amid cries of Allahu akbar – ‘God is greatest’ – they were decapitated by a burly executioner wielding a huge sword, who then held aloft their heads. Welcome, I said to myself with a shudder of horror, to Saudi Arabia.
Just a couple of hours later, I was sitting in a Starbucks cafe inside a glitzy mall surrounded by families strolling with their children, mostly dressed in Western clothes and eating ice cream. It struck me that it could have been Knightsbridge in London.
In that single day I witnessed the deep contradictions that lie at the heart of Saudi society: a country with ultra-modern infrastructure and astonishing wealth created by vast oil reserves, but whose people are repressed by a ruthless Islamic theocracy and a justice system that is almost incomprehensibly medieval.
For all of the Western trappings, the absolute monarchy that rules there will brook no opposition. As I discovered during three years working on a newspaper in Jeddah, all local papers and TV stations are government-controlled.
Meanwhile, the adamantine rule of the courts means that Saudis are unlikely to be mugged as they carry bagfuls of designer shopping back to their cars. Indeed, you probably won’t even see a uniformed police officer. But small wonder given the severity of the punishments, even for petty crimes.
In 2015, a British grandfather faced 350 lashes for possessing bottles of homemade alcohol, a sentence which was suspended only after an outcry in the British Press. Others were not so fortunate. A blogger was sentenced to 1,000 lashes for insulting Islam. A Saudi airline employee was jailed for five years and sentenced to 1,000 lashes because he discussed his sex life on TV.
GOD help those who refuse to toe the line politically: the secret police will swoop on you in an instant. There are at least 30,000 political prisoners in Saudi prisons, where the conditions are appalling, and torture chambers abound.
As for the executions, sometimes those who are beheaded are also crucified. Even stoning and eye-gouging aren’t unheard of. It is literally Biblical. Which is why the events of recent days in Istanbul should come as no surprise to those who have lived in this wrathful Arab kingdom, whose royal house never hesitates to seek vengeance against its enemies.
The killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi has dragged Saudi Arabia and its leaders into a global furore that may have profound repercussions for the West’s influence in the Middle East.
What is particularly troubling about this terrible story is that Saudi Arabia’s powerful crown prince and de- facto leader, Mohammad bin Salman, 33, personally stands accused of sending those 15 assassins to murder his most fearless political opponent. They allegedly include a number of his bodyguards.
Khashoggi was targeted because he had moved to America, was the most prominent critic of bin Salman, and was about to launch a political party with the goal of overthrowing the Saudi monarchy.
Few had heard of him before he disappeared, but his name was all too familiar to me.
In the 2000s, I was a correspondent in Saudi Arabia for a number of Western media outlets, while working as the managing editor of the Jeddah-based daily Arab News. Khashoggi was the deputy editor, and we worked side by side in the office for the best part of three years. Back then, I could never have imagined that one day I would end up covering his atrocious slaying. At the same time, the news from Istanbul was not entirely surprising.
Let’s face it, we have been sickeningly aware for as long as we can remember that Saudi Arabia is capable of the worst kinds of crimes against humanity. Even Saudi royalty deemed beyond the pale by the upper echelons have found themselves drugged while living abroad, then whisked back to the kingdom on a private jet – sometimes never to be heard from again.
This kind of reckless behaviour happens so frequently because the ruling family are convinced their vast oil wealth means they can do whatever they damn well please.
Until now, that has invariably been the outcome. Even back in the mid-80s, Margaret Thatcher personally lobbied the Saudi royal family, flattering them to secure major arms deals for Britain. Ever since, the West has been caught in this Gordian knot of having to turn a blind eye to terrible human rights abuses in the name of profit and jobs.
Only last year, Donald Trump signed $110billion in proposed deals with the Saudis, while the UK issued 126 licences relating to military goods with a value of £1.129billion.
There is also Saudi Arabia’s key role in supporting US foreign policy objectives in the region, which are centred on containing Iran. Saudi Arabia has formed an unofficial alliance with Israel with that aim, since both the Sunni Muslim kingdom and the Jewish state share a fear of the expansionism and nuclear ambitions of Iran, which follows the rival Shia Muslim faith. Washington worries that a weakened Saudi Arabia will embolden Iran.
This is also why the West has been so reluctant to criticise the Saudi-led war in neighbouring Yemen, where a Saudi bombardment has destroyed the country, leaving 10,000 civilians dead and 15million facing what the UN says could be the worst famine the world has known in 100 years.
THIS, then, is the backdrop to the diplomatic crisis which has enveloped Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman who, let us remember, had tea with the Queen during a state visit in March when the Government rolled out the red carpet for him.
It’s true he has initiated social reforms in the desert kingdom which are welcome, if long overdue. He has sought to curtail the religious police, allowed women to drive, given permission for cinemas and other entertainment venues to open, and relaxed rules restricting how men and women can socialise in public. All of that, though, has come at a massive cost, and it is one which Khashoggi’s murder has finally brought to the world’s attention.
In recent months, Saudi Arabia has entered a downward spiral and is now more tyrannical than ever. In fact, it is no exaggeration
to say that bin Salman has emerged as the most paranoid, ruthless and brutal Arab leader since Saddam Hussein. Apart from arbitrarily imprisoning and allegedly torturing leading princes and businessmen during a corruption crackdown, he has detained the families of overseas activists to pressure them into silence.
He has overseen the cruel destruction of entire Shia Muslim villages in response to mostly peaceful protests.
The question now is whether, in the wake of the Khashoggi affair, the West has finally had enough, if not of bin Salman, then at least of his excesses. Mr Trump says he is ‘not satisfied’ with Saudi Arabia’s account of Khashoggi’s death – that he died after a fist fight – and has repeated his threat of imposing some form of sanctions against the kingdom.
But the danger is that in the end, all of this posturing may amount to very little in terms of concrete measures.
Those decades of arms deals have tied the UK and the US to Saudi in a way that is impossible to untangle, and they have skilfully positioned themselves as a bulwark against America’s regional enemies.
No one should dismiss, either, the Saudis’ warning that they will deploy oil supplies as a weapon to retaliate if any kind of sanctions are imposed.
MBS, as he is known, may not have foreseen the firestorm sparked by the targeting of Jamal Khashoggi, but he knows he needs Western economic investment and US political support more than ever.
HIS task of dragging Saudi Arabia into the 21st century is Herculean, and he is still the kingdom’s best bet in the coming years. Even so, we should put him on notice: our patience is not limitless. The hope must be that he will think twice before pulling a similar stunt in the future.
That is, if he has a future. On Thursday, the French daily paper Le Figaro published a bombshell story which reports the Saudi royal family is actively considering a replacement – his less ambitious and more predictable brother, Prince Khalid bin Salman.
Whatever unfolds in the corridors of power in Riyadh, our own politicians, too, deserve a warning about their closeness to the Saudi regime. As this paper reported on Friday, Saudi Arabia has tripled spending on British MPs this year to £100,000 in the form of junkets, gifts and other benefits.
With so many on the gravy train, it’s hardly surprising that when an outrage like Istanbul occurs, there seems so little will to bring anyone to account in this baleful desert kingdom.
John R Bradley is the author of Saudi Arabia exposed: Inside a Kingdom in Crisis (St. Martin’s Press)