One thing characterizes the intrigue around the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi: Confusion. There is confusion about what happened to him, who did it, and how to respond to it. There is confusion about who he was, how much one should mourn him, and how to even pronounce his name. There is confusion in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Europe, and above all in the US.
There should not be that much confusion. In the middle east confusion comes from the very definition of what the middle east stands for. This is the home of fake news, conspiracy theories, and utter bullshit. The utter trash pushed by Al-Jazeera and Sabah is only rivaled by Al-Arabiya. But this is par for the course for the mideast. This is the raison d’être for Al-Jazeera, and is the well-practiced plan-B for Al-Arabiya.
What is really interesting is how the trash reporting has infected western media. On the one hand one has to ask how this news has been the exclusive main headline on CNN for almost two weeks. This is a feat rivaled only by 9/11 or the Iraq war. So is this event on the same magnitude. But even more interesting is the calibre of news that has occasionally seeped to Reuters and AP, and has consistently been a staple of CNN’s coverage.
Western media will at one point find itself bewildered by the ride they have been taken on. And it’s not the first time. The Arab Spring and the Syrian civil war have also been characterized by mideast bullshit infecting western media. There are sensationalized reports on audio and video recordings, playing music while bone sawing corpses, burials in remote woods, in consular backyards, and far away beaches. There is a black and white narrative in which the victim is whitewashed and the perpetrator is portrayed as a DC villain. It’s all very Arab Spring. And it’s all a load of bullshit.
And it’s not a mystery either. The reasons this virus has infected western media is very clear: They report from mideast sources. Of course if you use any mideast source, the news will not be reliable. It really does not make a difference if it’s Israelis, Qatari, Turkish, Saudi, or Egyptian. It’s all a load of bull. And western media should know it. But for some reason, when it comes to covering the middle east, a good and evil narrative is inescapable.
So how does one approach a problem like this? The only way to approach anything that has to do with the middle east is to use an evidence based method. Do not believe anything without plenty of evidence. Be very cognizant of what you consider evidence. Use a lot of healthy skepticism. But avoid skepticism in the face of absolute proof, because this is the home of conspiracy theories.
There is one fact in the whole Khashoggi case: He entered the consulate in Istanbul, and there is zero evidence that he left it. Nothing else is a fact. Nothing.
But there are corollaries that you can draw from this fact. You can comfortably say that the maximum likelihood scenario is that the Saudis killed him in the consulate. Why? Because there is plenty of motivation now to show evidence that they did not. And they surely DO have video recordings of what did happen. Even if they had kidnapped him, it would be less harmful now to show him in some Saudi jail than to show nothing. Thus, he was most likely killed, and most likely by them.
Another very strong corollary is that the Turks were spying on the Saudi consulate. And that they are probably spying on many other diplomatic missions in Ankara and Istanbul. It is also very likely that the Turks knew he was being killed or even was going to be killed ahead of time but chose to give the Saudis more rope to hang themselves.
Nothing else is a fact or even likely. You should be agnostic about everything else. No bonesaws, no overdoses, burials, black cars, fifteen diplomats, people close to MbS, or any of the other intriguing details. Everything else is bullshit until proven not bullshit. And the standard for proving it not bullshit is that a western intelligence or diplomatic source informs a western media outlet of having first hand witnessed the evidence. Any sourcing in which a Turkish official or Turkish media are involved is as good as void and null.
The question remains, what should the west do about this. How much and how far should Saudi Arabia be “punished”. What should they do about that rogue of a prince, MbS.
The problem is that western media, and perhaps a lot of western politicians expect there to be clean, clear, and uncompromising answers to the middle east. This was the great sin of the Arab Spring. Obama assumed that there is a moral position to take on Tahrir Square. Mainstream media in the west echoed the sentiment. This delusion stems from the way the west sees things in the middle east.
The west wants to see clean and clear images. And to see these images, they use their friends and connections in the middle east. Their “activist” connections and friends are happy to oblige.
Tahrir Square was a very comforting scene. An old, frail, autocratic, oppressive, and violent dictator on the one hand. A diverse, tolerant, youthful, media connected, freedom loving, secular, and hopeful mass of normal people on the other. The decision was easy. But the outcome was not as expected.
Nor was it anywhere that the Arab Spring virus hit. Why? Because the image exported to the west was bullshit. The west was shown what the west wanted to see in Tahrir Square. The realities on the ground were hid. The Islamists kept to the sideline. The plight and fears of minorities, secularists, and the millions of people who had legitimate interests were ignored. The real price in terms of economic fallout and loss of development was brushed aside. And Mubarak was painted as a one dimensional character, the darkness necessary for the light of Tahrir to shine.
On Saudi Arabia and MbS, this same addiction to fairy book clarity still plagues the west. The same dependence on suspect sources still persists. And the same lack of realism still plagues them.
Saudi Arabia is a strange and complicated country. If you visit Jeddah the first thing that would hit you is how similar it is to American cities. Saudi Arabia has always been a very odd mix of modernity and conservatism. It is an odd mix of understandings, agreements, coercion, and compromise. Tribal balance, family connections that extend for thousands of miles and across millions of people, and an odd form of fairness and equitable distribution of wealth.
But this peculiar equilibrium has never been liked by the west, particularly western elites. Some of this dislike is based in western elites failing to understand that other societies can be different from them without being evil. This, for example, was the case when western elites accused the Saudi royal family of hoarding wealth and impoverishing their own people. This is unfair, untrue, and counter productive. And thus no matter how much this line was pushed as an inroad to “liberate” the Saudi people it never worked, because it has no resonance on the ground.
But in some other respects the western elites were right. Saudi Arabia’s alliance between the house of Saud and the Wahabi clergy has indeed done tremendous harm to the world and the Muslim world in particular. Its enormous wealth has allowed Saudi Arabia to influence world Islam more than any other country in the twentieth century. And the end product has been an Islam that is less tolerant, more violent, and more crippling than any historical form of the religion. Yes, Saudi Arabia stands almost single handedly responsible for everything from Al-Qaeda to ISIL. And yes, Saudi Arabia has been a leader in the oppression of women and minorities in the Muslims world.
This crippling stagnation was perhaps most clearly felt by Saudi millennials. With the advent of social media, Saudi youth felt that their country was not what it could be. Saudi Arabia was wealthy, but it was slow, old, conservative, and reactive. This was how they saw their country on the inside as well as from the outside. There was plenty of appetite for a more muscular, progressive, aggressive, and assertive Saudi Arabia.
And MbS was the answer to their prayers. Understanding the above sense is important to understanding MbS and why he might have more support than western media thinks. The main sentiment of Saudis is that their country can and should do more. It certainly has the potential to do so. In other words, they felt their country was losing when it should win. And MbS was promising them they were going to win so much, they would get tired of winning. Which should be a familiar sentiment to many western countries whose own governments are being swept by nativism.
So how should we judge MbS? Is he a false messiah because he apparently killed Khashoggi? Maybe the answer is that this is not a mutually exclusive choice because the world is not that simple. MbS is the reformer he was hailed as, he is also the war criminal everyone has been screaming about, and he also killed a dissident in a consulate.
He did ban the religious police. This is a fact. And anyone who lived in Saudi Arabia knows how fundamental a change this is. He did allow women to drive, and yeah you might think it’s not perfect and it shouldn’t be seen as such a magnanimous gift, but it is; because this is Saudi Arabia not Switzerland. He is trying to modernize the country, diversify the economy, and create a tolerance for expats and diversity that Saudi society never really had.
He has also started a war where the most powerful country in the Arab world has mercilessly pounded the poorest Arab country into unbearable levels of destitution. The Yemen war is a horror of horrors. It is a debacle for those prosecuting it, and a terror for those upon which it is being prosecuted. And MbS is its main instigator. But no country can claim any moral authority on this war because all countries in the world have either been participants in this war, or silent bystanders.
MbS did kidnap the prime minister of Lebanon. And he did force him to film a ransom video before letting him go. This awful act was a manifestation of the Saudi’s feeling that the region has been milking them for too long while giving nothing in return. The Lebanese Sunni coalition has been happy to accept Saudi money, but slow to do Saudi’s bidding. And this was going to stop. Saudis were going to give no more free lunches.
And this is where MbS and his youth base really made a mistake. Saudi Arabia was not in the business of free lunches. Saudi Arabia was in the business of cultivating alliances, maintaining stability, and nurturing allegiance. The old school Saudi monarchy did not expect vassals, they expected allies, and allies they got. When push came to shove, the Arab world always stood by Saudi, as everyone with whom they cultivated a relation did during the invasion of Kuwait.
MbS’s tenure of screwing with the balance of the middle east is part of the reason they suddenly find themselves with only tepid support from allies. But his disruptive nature should only be a let down to the Arab world, it should theoretically be welcome by western elites. After all, he is disrupting old and corrupt norms, isn’t he?
But that’s where the west starts to face the reality of what it really wants. Is the west really interested in a Saudi Arabia that reforms itself, but inevitably becomes more independent, disruptive, and potentially destructive? Or does the west want stability and sane measured government? It is the same dilemma of the Arab Spring, except that the stakes are at once more manageable and more dire.
So what should a moral person do in this situation? One should be aware of facts. All facts. A man was killed. He was brutally killed. He was killed in a backstabbing way in a location where nobody should expect to be killed. He was killed by his own government.
That man was not a reformer, a democrat, or a mild mannered thinker. He was a Muslim Brotherhood sympathizer, anti-Semite, and a discriminatory muslim supremacist.
Those who bemoan the death of Jamal are not reformers or democrats. Qatar has supported as much atrocity as Saudi. Turkey is a despotic autocratic country that imprisons more journalists than any other country. All the activists crying over the death of Jamal are eager to politicize it and use it to start some sort of Islamist revolt in Saudi Arabia and the region.
MbS is a disruptive killer. He is a war criminal par excellence. He is also a reformer, and probably more of an egalitarian democrat than the “journalist” he killed in the consulate. Messy, right? So is life.
These are the facts, do with them as you want. But whatever position you take, the most immoral thing to do is to ignore the facts.
