The disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi does appear to be a major embarrassment for the kingdom. In particular it's a setback for the supposedly moderate reforming Saudi leader, Mohamed bin Salman:
The Saudis have come under considerable international pressure over the disappearance.
Diplomatic sources told the BBC's James Landale that both US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and UK International Trade Secretary Liam Fox might not attend next month's investment conference in Riyadh, which has been dubbed "Davos in the Desert".
The event is being hosted by the kingdom's Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman to promote his reform agenda. Several sponsors and media groups have decided to pull out.
A joint statement of condemnation, if it is confirmed that Mr Khashoggi was killed by Saudi agents, is also being discussed by US and European diplomats.
The Saudis are of course perfectly capable of this kind of ruthless brutality, but, then again, it's all a bit odd. The accusers, Erdogan's Turkey, are most unlikely supporters of the rights of an independent critical press, having the distinction of being the country that, in 2017, jailed the most journalists: 73, with China coming in a poor second with 41. The claim in the Turkish press that the evidence of Khashoggi's murder may have been transmitted via his Apple watch is looking dubious at best. So yes, the Saudis are perfectly capable of this - but then again Erdogan is perfectly capable of cooking up the whole story.
Niall Ferguson, in the Sunday Times (£), makes some good points:
“Undemocratic regime kills journalist” is a headline that, most of the time, vies with “Dog bites man” for the bottom right-hand corner of page 5. However, the fate of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi — who has not been seen since entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on October 2 — has become front-page news. Why?...
The explanation of the storm around Khashoggi is simple. First, he worked for The Washington Post. Second, the strong suspicion that he has been murdered at the orders of the Saudi government is highly embarrassing to the administration of Donald Trump — if not to the president himself, who is of course incapable of being embarrassed — because resuscitating the relationship between Washington and Riyadh has been central to its strategy in the Middle East.
It is embarrassing, too, for the very large number of western businessmen and journalists who over the past year have accepted the invitations of the Saudi crown prince, Mohammad bin Salman (MBS). That clicking sound you hear is hundreds of emails being sent to cancel the earlier acceptances of invitations to MBS’s Future Investment Initiative (“Davos in the desert”), which is due to take place later this month....
Wait a second. The Turks say they have audio and video evidence to prove their allegation. Let’s see it first, shall we? Because I no more trust the Turkish dictator, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, than I do MBS. And Erdogan has no shortage of motives for skulduggery of his own. He has every reason to mistrust his Russian spouse-of-convenience, Vladimir Putin, when it comes to Syria. His currency just fell off a cliff and his banks are in trouble, so he could use some help from the International Monetary Fund. Funny how the Khashoggi story broke a few days before the Turks released the US pastor Andrew Brunson this weekend.
As I said, there are autocrats — lots of them, especially in and around the Middle East. When it comes to press freedom, it’s a really close ugliness contest. Is the US supposed to have diplomatic relations only with liberal democracies? If so, that means just Israel in that part of the world. Hands up, all those in favour of that approach. (At this point Jeremy Corbyn and all those on the left who share his deep antipathy to Israel start hissing.)...
The problem is not a new one: it is as old as American foreign policy. You can’t be a great power, much less a superpower, and not have dealings — and sometimes alliances — with nasty, undemocratic regimes. And the mere fact you form alliances with them won’t make them change their ways.
You would think by now this simple truth would be obvious. But no. There will always be a market for hacks wanting to write “J’accuse” articles about any president or secretary of state (so long as he’s Republican) who has “blood on his hands” because he shook the hands of dictators.
What’s more irritating is the inability of the authors of such articles ever to get the orders of magnitude right. For reasons that are hard to fathom, Henry Kissinger has been condemned over and over again for having conveyed American support to General Pinochet’s regime in Chile, yet he has been praised to the skies just as frequently for having brought Richard Nixon to China to shake the hand of Mao Tse-tung. Which dictator killed more people? There’s no contest....
Trump has said that the billion dollar arms deals with the Saudis won't be affected. But with these kinds of huge deals at stake here, there are very good reasons to be sceptical about all this, at least until we know more.
The late Mr. Khashoggi was a flack for the Muslim Brotherhood and a friend of the last Osama bin Laden. He deserves tears from no one. Good riddance.
The Saudi government is despicable, as it always has been, but no more so than any number of other governments in that benighted region or elsewhere - including such governments with which the Western elite wish to do business as China, Iran and Cuba (or will wish to business with again, as soon as Trump is gone, i.e., Russia).
If MBS, as repellant as he is, is willing to take sides with the West against Iran, Islamic terrorism and the Muslim Brotherhood, we should have no more hesitation in making an alliance of convenience with him than we did in making such an alliance with Stalin.
Posted by: djf | October 14, 2018 at 09:40 PM
"Prince" Charles digs the Saudis big time. He'll visit them the very day after a woman has received a hundred lashes for adultery or an apostate has been sentenced to death. If only the Briddish had that sort of simple justice, then that tunnel business would have been completely unnecessary. The Saudis as major oil producers are on Charles' hit list but they've got plenty of sun there and Charles is hoping to convert them to solar waffles. Maybe wind turbines too but the royal falcons don't go for bird slicers much.
Posted by: Michael van der Riet | October 15, 2018 at 06:30 AM