Jamal Khashoggi talking:
Jamal Khashoggi is not a usual or a typical dissident or opposition figure. He started his career in Saudi Arabia as a journalist, and he was very close to the Saudi government. So, let me just explain what it means to be a journalist in Saudi Arabia. It is nothing like being a journalist in any other country in the West, for example. So, all the newspapers are either owned by the government or by individual princes, and therefore, he was an employee of the state in his capacity as a journalist. And he developed his career writing in Arabic in several Saudi newspapers. Some of them are pan-Arab. They are directed towards the Arab world. But he continued to be very, very close to the Saudi regime as a writer, but also as a defender of policies that were introduced over the years.
So, to give you an example, he had—probably his best days were during the rule of King Abdullah. So, he was promoting not democracy—because if he did that at the time, he would have ended up in prison. But he was almost like praising King Abdullah and praising his so-called reforms. I mean, the word “reform” comes up every time we have a new king, but we don’t go far in that reform.
So, also, there was a—he was close to Al-Waleed bin Talal, who is probably known to Western audiences as the tycoon, the businessman, who owns a media empire that he started in Saudi Arabia. And he wanted Jamal Khashoggi to be the director of a new news channel based in Bahrain called Al-Arab. And Khashoggi was meant to go there and inaugurate this news channel. But it is very, very interesting that that news channel lasted two hours, and it was shut down on orders from the Saudi regime. And therefore, Khashoggi returned to Saudi Arabia and continued to write, until King Salman and Mohammed bin Salman came to power. And that’s when he began to have a difficult relationship.
Also, let’s not forget that one of his main jobs was as an adviser and spokesperson to Prince Turki al-Faisal, who was the ex-director of intelligence in Saudi Arabia. Later, he became the ambassador of Saudi Arabia in Washington and London. So he was very close to that person. Then, Khashoggi, at the time when Mohammed bin Salman came to power, he almost like had no patron anymore, because he wasn’t close to the new guards that came with Mohammed bin Salman, and therefore, he was banned from writing, he was suspended, until, suddenly, he appeared in Washington and started writing for The Washington Post.
So, my guess is Jamal Khashoggi should not be regarded as an opposition figure, as a dissident. He is a defector from within the corridors of power of the Saudi regime, and he moved to Washington, which really worried the Saudis, I think, simply because he’s close to the patrons, the protectors of the Saudi regime. Let’s not forget that Saudi Arabia depends for its security on the U.S. And therefore, he began to write critically of the time of Mohammed bin Salman and his reforms—not all of them. He appreciated some of them—for example, giving women the right to drive, introducing cinemas and theater in Saudi Arabia. But he was desperate to have freedom of speech in Saudi Arabia as a journalist, and he started writing for a different audience, an English-speaking audience, which probably worried the Saudi regime, as Jamal Khashoggi knows too much, perhaps, and they did not want this to go further.
So, there was the story of him attending conferences in London and going also to Istanbul, until we saw that video of him entering the Saudi Consulate looking for a document. That’s the story that we got from his fiancée, who was waiting for him outside the consulate, that he needed a document to say that he’s divorced his wife in Saudi Arabia, and therefore he will be able to remarry in Turkey. So, this is the story that we have. This is Jamal Khashoggi.
I appeared with Jamal Khashoggi on television and on radio when he was the spokesperson of Prince Turki al-Faisal, the ambassador in London. We disagreed about so many things, but I must say that he was a very polite person who was defending the realm. He was defending the king, the policies of the kingdom at the time, in his role as the spokesperson for the ambassador.
– the Middle East Eye is reporting Saudi authorities banned Khashoggi from writing in newspapers, appearing on TV and attending conferences, after his remarks during a presentation he made at a Washington think tank on November 10th, in which he was critical of Donald Trump’s ascension to the presidency. It was right after Trump’s election.
I think here we should leave the investigation of the possible murder of Jamal to the right people who are actually—who know what they’re doing. What is going to happen in Saudi Arabia and what should happen is that, first, we need to know who the murderers are and who gave them orders.
And if it is proven that Mohammed bin Salman is responsible, there are two things that could save Saudi Arabia at this moment. One, King Salman must sack his son and find an alternative crown prince. He should go into—sink into oblivion, because his name is associated with this murder, if there is evidence to prove that.
The second thing, I believe that just replacing Mohammed bin Salman with another prince is not enough. There has to be a political change in Saudi Arabia to mitigate against the emergence of a new MBS. In an absolute monarchy, we can’t just simply wait and hope that the future king will be better than the previous one. There is no mechanism in Saudi Arabia to mitigate against the emergence of somebody like MBS or previous kings. I mean, we focus on MBS as if Saudi Arabia had like enjoyed a certain kind of openness or democracy or the elements of free speech. It’s never been a free country. And therefore, King Salman, if he wants to save Saudi Arabia from future upheaval, civil wars, etc., he needs to start thinking and making a pledge that Saudi Arabia will become a constitutional monarchy, in which the al-Saud will become symbolic figures in order to allow a transition to more democratic systems.
Personally, I do not support any monarchy, whether it’s an absolute monarchy or a constitutional monarchy like the ones that we have in the Arab world. Even in that constitutional arrangement, we still have that the king interferes in everything. And we have examples, from Morocco to Jordan to Kuwait to Bahrain. And therefore—but as a transitional period, as a period to prepare Saudi Arabia for a better future, then the king must act now.
However, I have my doubts, because King Salman is very old and he may not be aware of the severity of what his son may have done. And therefore, to focus the mind of the world on this change is extremely important, because Saudi Arabia is not a country with resources for its own people; it’s a country that is relevant to the world economy. And if we have a situation in Saudi Arabia along the lines of Syria, Yemen or Iraq, then the whole world will feel the shock.
from the very beginning, almost 2015, I predicted that the Yemen war that the Saudis are launching is a war impossible to win. You cannot bomb a very, very poor country and kill over 10,000 civilians and stabilize a country. It’s just not going to happen. The Saudis should have stayed outside that country and not interfered so much in its internal politics. There had been a struggle for power in Yemen, but the Saudi intervention has made it worse and has actually contributed to that struggle for power not ending soon.
So the war in Yemen should stop immediately, because it’s going nowhere, and it has become—Yemen itself has become a training ground for an inexperienced Saudi Army that has never actually participated in a war or launched a war or let alone achieved victory in a war. Let’s remember that in 1991, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, the Saudi regime had to invite 500,000 troops to defend itself against a possible invasion by Saddam Hussein. And therefore, the Saudi Army now is using Yemen as a training ground. Even if it doesn’t achieve victory there, it’s still a battleground where they practice, and practice killing in Yemen, which should not go unchecked.
And unfortunately, the United States and Britain, the two countries that are actually extremely heavily involved in this war through selling arms to Saudi Arabia, are keeping quiet, and they keep assuring us that they have constructive engagement with the Saudis to minimize civilian death. But day after day, we have targets being hit, and they happen to be a bus with schoolchildren. So I’m not sure how this precision bombing and the constructive engagement of the two Western countries supporting the war is leading to some kind of improvement in the military practices of the Saudi Army.
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Madawi Al-Rasheed
Saudi dissident and visiting professor at the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics. She was stripped of her Saudi citizenship in 2005 for criticizing Saudi authorities.
— source democracynow.org | Oct 19, 2018