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Ed Webb

Will MBS Bankrupt Saudi Arabia? - Middle East News - Haaretz.com - 0 views

  • five years in and with little progress in sight, cracks are appearing in Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s flagship project to diversify the oil-driven Saudi economy. Neom’s former employees raised concerns that bringing the giga-project out of the realm of science fiction might never happen. Architecture experts have called it “insane.” Sources inside the royal circle no longer shy away from lashing out at MBS’ ever-changing ideas, “mood swings,” “terrible tempers” and fear-based leadership.
  • “The general concern is this will turn out like for the Shah of Iran, developing schemes that become incredibly detached from reality and no one will tell him to refocus,” a source familiar with the dynamics of Saudi Arabia’s royal family told me, on condition of anonymity
  • the risk of the Crown Prince ending up in an echo chamber cemented by yes-men. Power consolidation under MBS is unprecedented in Saudi Arabia’s recent history, moving the kingdom’s system from “one of consensus within the family to one-man rule.”
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  • Leaks reveal insiders’ growing uneasiness, which points to the elephant-in-the-room question: Will MBS’ grandiose venture bankrupt the kingdom?
  • Saudi private investors will also be encouraged to pitch in during a potential public listing of Neom in 2024. That raises questions about how consensual this private investment will be. Indeed, Saudi Arabia reportedly “bullied” several of the kingdom’s wealthiest families to become cornerstone investors out of “patriotic duty” in the IPO of Saudi energy firm Aramco in 2019.
  • a large chunk of Saudi money carefully set aside for decades to fund the transition to a post-oil era will pay for Neom's astronomical price tag. A bet on an unproven vision
  • “Infrastructure spending is like doing lines of cocaine; you have to do bigger and bigger and bigger lines just to feel high,”
  • Neom’s initial burst of economic activity, if unsustainable at a similar pace, would simply be "stealing" future economic benefits to create an illusion of growth right now
  • perhaps the motive is not sustainable growth at all, but creating what Pettis calls a "pyramid effect." This would be an attempt to copy monarchs of ancient Egypt who redistributed wealth to the population through jobs – paid laborers built Egyptian pyramids, not slaves. Although Saudi Arabia’s oil wealth is already redistributed to ordinary Saudis through public-sector jobs and subsidies, a large tranche is retained and stored in its sovereign wealth funds and U.S. Treasuries. In theory, flushing Saudi citizens with cash would stimulate the local non-oil economy. But in practice, the pyramid effect is likely to first and foremost cause economic leakages, as the kingdom imports most of what it consumes locally, including labor, despite the “Saudification” of the labor market being one of Vision 2030’s key priorities. Migrant workers account for about 77 percent of private sector jobs. At Neom, highly paid Western consultants are toiling to match MBS’ demands, and Asian low-income workers are building it, remitting Saudi money home.
  • Riyadh sweetened the project’s launch party with a flurry of social reforms, such as lifting the ban on women driving. (Saudi Arabia was the last country in the world to lift this kind of ban, and it didn’t do so as a principled stand on behalf of women’s rights.) The idea was not only creating a buzz among investors and the global public, but whipping up aspirational momentum among Saudis.
  • 60 skyscrapers that were built in Riyadh’s financial center are still standing largely empty.
  • MBS, high on his visionary self-branding and his concentration of power, may have to pay the costs of bankruptcy – whether by admitting full responsibility or via a renewed deployment of decidedly imperious and despotic tactics to crush dissent. The latter path is, of course, what the late Shah of Iran chose, with notorious results.
Ed Webb

Agriculture in Europe to decline as Asian output grows: UN, OECD - 0 views

  • Agricultural production in Western Europe is set to decline over the coming decade, with output in Africa and Asia expected to increase, the OECD and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization said
  • Middle East meanwhile faces a rising threat of food insecurity, the report said, as conflict, climate change and poor policy all have the effect of keeping the region overly reliant on imports
  • In sub-Saharan Africa, crop production is set to expand by 30 percent, with meat and dairy both set to grow by 25 percent
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  • the region's food security is set to remain dependent on global markets, because "domestic production capacity will remain insufficient to meet the region's growing consumption needs"
  • The Middle East, which is mired in conflict and political unrest, has a "high and growing dependence" on imports for key food products, the report said, leaving the region in a state of increasing food insecurity.Arable land and water are growing more scarce in the region, both because of climate change pushing temperatures up, and as a result of poor agricultural policy from governments."It is difficult to overestimate the importance of the water issue in the Middle East and North Africa region," the report said."Along with conflict, it is the most profound man-made threat to the region's future,"
Ed Webb

bellingcat - Lord Of The Flies: An Open-Source Investigation Into Saud Al-Qahtani - bel... - 0 views

  • Before tuning in via Skype to oversee the murder and dismemberment of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Saud al-Qahtani, a high-level adviser to the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), was best known for running social media operations for the royal court and serving as MBS’s chief propagandist and enforcer. His portfolio also included hacking and monitoring critics of the Kingdom and MBS.
  • Al-Qahtani registered at least 22 domains since 2009, some of which have been used as command and control servers for malware
  • al-Qahtani’s posts on Hack Forums detail the hacking tools and services he purchased and used and the social media platforms and mobile apps he targeted. By June 2011, less than two years after joining the forum, he estimated that he had 90% of paid and free RATs on the market. Al-Qahtani also paid Hack Forum members to have social media accounts deleted and sought to manufacture engagement activity on major social media platforms, including YouTube and Facebook.
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  • He also posted at least three times while drunk, by his own admission, and opined on topics unrelated to hacking such as the role of religion in politics and policy toward Iran.
  • MBS’s repression machine is alive and well thanks in no small part to the Trump administration’s refusal to hold the Saudi strongman and his regime to account. 
  • Since Khashoggi was murdered last October, the CIA has observed its “duty to warn” on three separate occasions, sharing intelligence to alert dissidents based in the U.S., Canada and Norway to threats originating from Saudi Arabia. 
  • multiple media outlets have cited sources saying that he is still in MBS’s good graces and continuing to work in a similar capacity as before he was officially ousted from the royal court.
  • The best open-source indication to date that al-Qahtani is continuing his hacking work comes from the Guardian, which reported in June 2019, that it was targeted by a Saudi hacking team at the order of al-Qahtani. The newspaper was initially warned of the order by a source in Riyadh earlier this year, and the threat was subsequently corroborated by a confidential internal order signed by al-Qahtani, which the Guardian reviewed. The document, dated March 7, 2019, was written in Arabic and instructed “heads of technological and technical departments” run from the cybersecurity directorate within the private office of the MBS to “carry out the penetration of the servers of the Guardian newspaper and those who worked on the report that was published, and deal with the issue with complete secrecy, then send us all the data as soon as possible.”
  • On June 19, 2019, Agnes Callamard, the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary killings, published a report on Khashoggi’s death, calling it a “premeditated extrajudicial execution” at the hands of the Saudi state. “His killing was the result of elaborate planning involving extensive coordination and significant human and financial resources. It was overseen, planned and endorsed by high-level officials. It was premeditated.”
  • The report specifically names al-Qahtani and MBS as two high-level officials who have not been criminally charged but for whom there is “credible evidence meriting further investigation.” 
  • In addition to the 22 domains analyzed above, this investigation identified several other domains that are likely linked to al-Qahtani but require further research and analysis
Ed Webb

Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince MBS Is Right Where Trump Wants Him - Bloomberg - 0 views

  • There came a moment during Donald Trump’s April 2 phone call to Mohammed bin Salman when Saudi Arabia’s crown prince and de facto ruler, apparently stunned by what the American president had just said, asked his aides to leave the room. No courtiers were present when their master, no slouch at intimidation himself, was apparently bullied into submission.
  • Trump had, in effect, threatened the complete withdrawal of American troops from the kingdom if the Saudis didn’t slash oil production.
  • the crown prince must now recognize the limitations of his ill-judged strategy to base relations with the U.S., the kingdom’s indispensable ally, exclusively on the cultivation of the first family. Previous Saudi rulers would have been able to rely on friends in Congress to plead with the White House for leniency. But MBS has few friends in Washington — and the army of lobbyists he maintains there is of limited use in a crisis.
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  • the prince is as close to a pariah as a senior member of the royal family has ever been in the 75 years of the Saudi-American alliance
  • broad, bipartisan support in Washington for punitive actions against Riyadh
  • MBS’s dependence on Trump — and the White House veto — to override this antagonism made him highly vulnerable to presidential strong-arm tactics.
  • The prince is now in a bind. He desperately needs to rebuild bridges with Congress, but that will be harder now that he has injured U.S. oil interests. Nor can he easily submit to pressure from American lawmakers on other issues without losing face at home and in the Arab world. 
  • The timing of his humiliation by Trump is especially unpropitious: The twin blows of the oil war and the coronavirus pandemic have greatly damaged the Saudi economy and undermined his ambitious reform agenda at home. His cherished plan to build a futuristic megacity on the Red Sea coast is facing unexpected opposition. Much effort and cost will be required to extricate Saudi Arabia from the Yemeni quagmire with a semblance of dignity.
Ed Webb

Saudi Crown Prince Asks: What if a City, But It's a 105-Mile Line - 0 views

  • Vicious Saudi autocrat Mohamed bin Salman has a new vision for Neom, his plan for a massive, $500 billion, AI-powered, nominally legally independent city-state of the future on the border with Egypt and Jordan. When we last left the crown prince, he had reportedly commissioned 2,300-pages’ worth of proposals from Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey & Co. and Oliver Wyman boasting of possible amenities like holographic schoolteachers, cloud seeding to create rain, flying taxis, glow-in-the-dark beaches, a giant NASA-built artificial moon, and lots of robots: maids, cage fighters, and dinosaurs.
  • Now Salman has a bold new idea: One of the cities in Neom is a line. A line roughly 105-miles (170-kilometers) long and a five-minute walk wide, to be exact. No, really, it’s a line. The proposed city is a line that stretches across all of Saudi Arabia. That’s the plan.
  • “With zero cars, zero streets, and zero carbon emissions, you can fulfill all your daily requirements within a five minute walk,” the crown prince continued. “And you can travel from end to end within 20 minutes.”AdvertisementThe end-to-end in 20 minutes boast likely refers to some form of mass transit that doesn’t yet exist. That works out to a transit system running at about 317 mph (510 kph). That would be much faster than Japan’s famous Shinkansen train network, which is capped at 200 mph (321 kph). Some Japanese rail companies have tested maglev trains that have gone up to 373 mph (600 kph), though it’s nowhere near ready for primetime.
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  • According to Bloomberg, Saudi officials project the Line will cost around $100-$200 billion of the $500 billion planned to be spent on Neom and will have a population of 1 million with 380,000 jobs by the year 2030. It will have one of the biggest airports in the world for some reason, which seems like a strange addition to a supposedly climate-friendly city.
  • The site also makes numerous hand wavy and vaguely menacing claims, including that “all businesses and communities” will have “over 90%” of their data processed by AI and robots:
  • Don’t pay attention to Saudi war crimes in Yemen, the prince’s brutal crackdowns on dissent, the hit squad that tortured journalist Jamal Khashoggi to death, and the other habitual human rights abuses that allow the Saudi monarchy to remain in power. Also, ignore that obstacles facing Neom include budgetary constraints, the forced eviction of tens of thousands of existing residents such as the Huwaitat tribe, coronavirus and oil shock, investor flight over human rights concerns, and the lingering questions of whether the whole project is a distraction from pressing domestic issues and/or a mirage conjured up by consulting firms pandering to the crown prince’s ego and hungry for lucrative fees. Nevermind you that there are numerous ways we could ensure the cities people already live in are prepared for climate change rather than blowing billions of dollars on a vanity project.
Ed Webb

Why Saudi Arabia is all in on sports - The Washington Post - 0 views

  • Saudi Arabia’s history with WWE, like much of its frenetic investment in sports and entertainment over the past few years, is a study in how little diplomacy is needed when you control one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in history. Using their Public Investment Fund, valued at more than $776 billion, the Saudis have effectively bought some of the world’s most loyal fan bases, bent opponents to their will and wildly shifted the economics of international sports.
  • In the sports world, overcoming a reputation as a global pariah — condemned by human rights organizations for alleged war atrocities and its links to the 9/11 hijackers, the imprisonment of activists and the Khashoggi assassination — has been as simple for Saudi Arabia as advancing claims of innocence or autonomy.
  • The Saudi Pro League has become the default destination for aging soccer legends seeking unprecedented paydays, including Cristiano Ronaldo, who reportedly is paid roughly $220 million per year to play for Al Nassr. Lionel Messi turned down a similar bounty in favor of playing in the United States. But he still agreed to promote Saudi Arabia for a reported $25 million under a contract that mandates he is not permitted to make any remarks that “tarnish” the kingdom.
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  • The Saudis have used their financial clout to ground down enemies in ways big and small, from Iranian American wrestlers facing scripted humiliation in WWE shows to American golf executives being forced to swallow previous bitter condemnations of the kingdom. Saudi Arabia’s golf takeover this year, in which the kingdom coerced the PGA Tour into a planned alliance after effectively winning a game of high-stakes chicken over the fate of one of the world’s most popular sports, struck some analysts as the final dam to break in the sports world’s resistance to Saudi involvement.
  • Sheikh celebrated by buying a $4.8 million Bugatti before landing on a larger vanity purchase. After a stint as honorary president of an Egyptian soccer club ended with him warring with management, Sheikh poured millions into buying a rival team and moving it to Cairo. Months later, he abandoned Egyptian soccer while lamenting the “headache.”
  • Sheikh’s management style has embodied Saudi Arabia’s foray into global sports: free-spending, rancorous and hyper-political. He commandeered the lectern at an international chess tournament in Riyadh to rail against “ministate” Qatar, and he ranted that the Saudi soccer team had put in “less than 5 percent effort” during a World Cup loss to Russia. With his penchant for showmanship, it was perhaps inevitable that one of the PIF’s first massive investments would be bringing WWE to Saudi Arabia — and, with it, hired wrestlers acting out the humiliation of what was then a Saudi enemy nation.AdvertisementStory continues below advertisementAt the Greatest Royal Rumble in Riyadh in April 2018, two Iranian American wrestlers, waving the Iranian flag, confronted four young Saudi wrestlers. The scripted comeuppance was swift: The Saudis pummeled the Iranians, brothers Ariya and Shawn Daivari, threw them out of the ring and sent them limping away as the crowd jeered.
  • Many Westerners ascribe a singular motive to Saudi Arabia, if not the entire Middle East, for its interest in sports: sportswashing. And Saudi Arabia has used sports to market its supposed makeover to the outside world — and to guard its image.
  • Another key currency in sports (and adjacent Spandex-clad theater) was embedded in that brief anti-Iranian WWE storyline, a forgettable footnote for American viewers. Saudi leaders have attempted to move the country away from religious fundamentalism, or Islamism, to replace it with something more palatable to global commerce: nationalism, partly ginned up by crushing Middle Eastern rivals at a game it came late to.AdvertisementStory continues below advertisementSaudi Arabia, with its geriatric leadership until six years ago, had inadvertently given the United Arab Emirates and Qatar a decades-long head start at investing in sports — but the much larger country has been a bully ever since.
  • by dissuading potential religious extremism, “The idea is to get the country to look quote-unquote ‘normal.’ ”
  • “one of those key moments of reputation laundering and propaganda that Mohammed bin Salman needed at that time: an American organization with a billionaire as famous as Vince McMahon appearing in Saudi Arabia and things going on as normal.”
  • In the years since Khashoggi’s murder, financial leaders returned to doing business with Saudi Arabia, partly revealed when the kingdom released a list of partners in venture capital, including some of the highest-profile firms in the world. (That includes Amazon, founded by Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post. In 2022, the PIF invested roughly $430 million in Amazon.) In sports, reticent executives became increasingly easy marks for a kingdom practiced at bending opponents to its will.
  • The PIF’s effort to purchase Newcastle United was stalled by Saudi Arabia’s alleged role in one of the world’s largest piracy operations, which for years brazenly stole Qatari content, including that of Premier League games, and beamed it to set-top boxes in Saudi homes.Saudi Arabia denied having a role in the piracy. Investigations by several organizations, from the World Trade Organization to FIFA, found otherwise. The piracy halted just before the PIF was set to complete its purchase of Newcastle.
  • “The majority of fans don’t care.”
  • The Saudis — with a diversified portfolio full of other sports — were willing to blow up golf. Pro golf executives, it turns out, were not.
  • Endeavor, helmed by Ari Emanuel, announced in April a $21 billion deal to merge UFC, its mixed martial arts company, with WWE. Less than five years earlier, Emanuel had returned $400 million to the Saudis so as not to have to partner with them in the wake of Khashoggi’s murder. But Endeavor and its related companies had recently done business with the kingdom again — including Endeavor’s IMG negotiating media rights for the Saudi Pro League. Under TKO, the company created in the merger with Emanuel as CEO, WWE plans to continue its Saudi shows. And UFC recently announced it would hold its first event in Saudi Arabia next year.
Ed Webb

What to make of these elections? - Blog - The Arabist - 0 views

  • The story has flipped suddenly fropm being about a repeat of the January uprising to being about splits in the Egyptian political spectrum and then about elections. Even from yesterday to today, the narrative has changed from a high level of concern about elections taking place in the middle of this mess to a recognition of strong voter enthusiasm in what may be the highest participation rate Egypt has experienced in decades.
  • Egyptian people are eager to participate in the democratic process that may have real meaning for the first time in their lives
  • It's a sign of support for the democratic process and hope for its improvement. That is a testimony of the Egyptian people's seriousness. But it does not change the fact that these elections were prepared with staggering, perhaps even malicious, incompetence and on that basis alone should not have been held, and that the transition blueprint in general is a bad one.
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  • The problem is that the Egyptian political class, and the protestors in Tahrir, was split on the question of elections and could never form a united boycott front to push SCAF to take the elections seriously (or push for a better transition plan). There was never a credible alternative presented to SCAF's transition plan, and Islamists in particular, by endorsing the flawed referendum process, made it impossible to call SCAF's incompetence. Over the summer it was because secular-Islamist arguments squandered the attention and energy of the political class. More recently it was was in part because of the MB (although the argument that liberals wanted to postpone elections because they were afraid of the MB does not hold: the MB will do well now or in three months' time), which saw in the elections a chance to consolidate their newfound political legitimacy as well as a better source of legitimacy then Tahrir with which, should it choose to, it can confront the SCAF (assuming it does well in the elections.)
  • Remember that in the last 20 years most Egyptian parliaments were seen as invalid, with the state preferring to gloss over the results of lawsuits contesting results (even by the Supreme Constitutional Court) rather than accept the invalidity of successive parliaments (and hence the laws they passed.) The next parliament may be on shaky legal ground, although this will probably (as under Mubarak) be ignored for convenience's sake. Except this parliament will produce the next constitution. 
  • The year ahead may be full of decisions regarding the elections, and the government and parties will probably want to ignore them, subverting the rule of law for stability's sake. All because they did not spend enough time thinking their decisions through.
  • the degradation of the state's institution, its ability to implement (or defend) the rule of law, and the very little legitimacy the state enjoys. In global surveys, I remember seeing Egypt ranked alongside Congo in terms of "legitimacy of the state".
  • Egyptians deserved better than the process they got today, and they should work to get the people who put them in this position out of power as soon as possible.
Ed Webb

Chart of the Day: Muslim Brotherhood Is Deeply Unpopular in Egypt - Max Fisher - Intern... - 0 views

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    Comments make fair point - these raw numbers do not capture broader socio-political dynamics & reach of Salafists & others on the Islamic right. MB don't have a lock, but they do have a strong position.
Ed Webb

The Limits of Mohammad bin Salman's Vision - LobeLog - 0 views

  • Americans are being told, by their leading pundits and their government, that the future Saudi king is a bold reformer with his country’s—and the world’s—best interests at heart
  • For every highly publicized reform he’s instituted, like allowing women to drive (a reform that doesn’t actually address the deeper mistreatment of Saudi women), Mohammad bin Salman (MbS) has taken the country in the opposite direction in other ways, like his severe crackdown on free speech and his brutal suppression of Saudi Arabia’s Shia minority—to say nothing of the myriad atrocities he’s perpetrated in Yemen
  • economic vision likewise blends flashy elements, like robot citizens and entire new cities, with the introduction of neoliberal austerity measures that will hurt the Saudi people (who are already struggling with high unemployment)
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  • These reforms are not targeting the root causes of restrictions on women, but are selected to portray certain types of reforms that can be promoted in international media
  • selected reforms aimed at certain purposes, but not necessarily towards developing human capital or investing in people, or women, at large
  • He doesn’t want any competition, any counter-opinions, any criticism. So he’s almost shut down everybody, and he’s moving ahead with his reform. When he arrested intellectuals last September, it was meant to silence everybody. The purge on corruption was planned to make everyone dependent on his mercy. If he succeeds, he will succeed alone. If not, maybe he will include the Saudi people in his reforms. I wish he could do that today, but right now he has all the power and the international community is not pressuring him on human rights.
  • He’s raising expectations to riskily high levels. If in two, three, five years nothing significant has really changed for the prospects of individual people looking to get ahead, they may begin to question whether Mohammad bin Salman is really the revolutionary he claims to be. We’ve seen a lot of his supporters here in Washington buying into that revolutionary, Arab Spring-like figure-of-change image, embracing his top-down approach without pausing to think about the extent to which there is a bottom-up counterpart
  • meeting with President Donald Trump on Tuesday was punctuated by a particularly uncomfortable exchange in which Trump went into detail about the $12.5 billion in new U.S. weapons the prince agreed to buy and then said to the prince, “that’s peanuts for you.” Ulrichsen suggested that the scene would not play well in Saudi Arabia: I think if I were watching yesterday’s press conference with Donald Trump, I would have been quite dismayed to have seen a U.S. president treat his Saudi counterpart as if he were just a source of opportunities for the U.S. Some of the president’s tenor and demeanor was quite remarkable. Khashoggi agreed that Trump’s performance was not helpful for the crown prince: President Trump is wrong when he says that money is “peanuts” to us. Saudi Arabia has a serious poverty problem—money is not “peanuts” to us. To spend billions of dollars on military equipment is a serious thing. Today the Saudi Shura Council is talking about 35 or 40 percent unemployment—the official figure is 12 percent. So as much as Donald Trump is concerned about providing jobs for Americans, Mohammad bin Salman should be concerned about providing jobs for Saudis.
Ed Webb

EXCLUSIVE: Top Saudi intelligence official 'chased' to Canada by MBS | Middle East Eye - 0 views

  • Saad al-Jabri, once a trusted top adviser to the crown prince's rival Mohammed bin Nayef, the former interior minister with deep ties to western intelligence agencies, is described by some observers as the most wanted Saudi outside the kingdom.  Jabri fled the kingdom in 2017 just before bin Nayef was put under house arrest and replaced as crown prince by his 31-year-old cousin. His refuge in Canada raises new questions about an unprecedented diplomatic row between Ottawa and Riyadh in the summer of 2018.
  • “Let’s assume that there might be a coup in Saudi,” said a source familiar with the situation who spoke, as did all those briefed on the events, on condition of anonymity. “He’s the biggest threat. He would have the money and power to do something.”
  • even in Canada, the former official continued to be pursued, receiving intimidating messages from Mohammed bin Salman. There was also concern that there was a rendition attempt on Canadian soil to bring Jabri back to the kingdom
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  • despite extensive relationships with the US intelligence community as bin Nayef’s aide, two sources informed on the matter said he did not feel safe in the US with Donald Trump in power. Instead, he went to Canada where officials secured his refuge in November 2017 and, a month later, several members of his family.
  • Jabri preferred Canada over the US not necessarily because of any specific security concerns, but because it may have been easier to bring his family to join him
  • Revelations of the Canadian government’s assistance to Jabri and his family will raise questions about the diplomatic row that broke out between Ottawa and Riyadh in August 2018. Until now, the spat appeared to the wider public to have started after Canada’s embassy in Riyadh tweeted in Arabic, calling for the release of rights activists, although experts say there were frustrations already brewing in Riyadh.
  • Within 48 hours of the tweets, Saudi Arabia withdrew its envoy, expelled the Canadian ambassador to the kingdom and froze all new business and investment transactions, leaving seasoned observers dumbfounded.
  • Sources informed about Jabri’s refuge in Canada say they believe the harbouring of the former official better explains why the row escalated so quickly.
  • Aside from his blog post, Jabri has been off the public radar since he left the kingdom although several Saudi and Gulf sources told MEE that they had heard that he was in Canada. “He’s kept out of the public eye,” said a Saudi dissident, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “A few people spotted him by chance, but not because he approached opposition people.”
  • Trump has come under fire for downplaying the role of Mohammed bin Salman in the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in November 2018 even though the CIA concluded that the crown prince ordered the operation.
  • Saudi dissidents, both in the US and in other countries, have told MEE that Trump’s response to the killing, paired with the administration’s close ties to the kingdom, has left them anxious about their security in the US.
  • earlier this year, Abdulrahman al-Mutairi, a young Saudi living in California who has spoken out against the crown prince, told the Daily Beast and the LA Times that the FBI had thwarted an attempt by the Saudi government to kidnap him on US soil.
  • "That Saudis wouldn't feel safe abroad, 100 percent I agree. Where I would be very sceptical is that it's because of the Trump administration. I think it's because of MBS that Saudis shouldn’t feel safe abroad."  
Ed Webb

MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman review - riveting account | Books | The G... - 0 views

  • Ben Hubbard’s account of the life, machiavellian style and ambitions of the de facto ruler of the largest and wealthiest country in the Gulf is a fine example of talented and dogged reporting. He also speaks and reads Arabic, not something you can take for granted among western Middle East journalists or even “experts”.
  • Hubbard draws on dozens of interviews to reconstruct the detention in the Ritz Carlton hotel in Riyadh of 350 princes and businessmen. Luxurious surroundings did not prevent intimidation, even torture. Prince Mohammed billed that as a battle against corruption and was endorsed by Donald Trump on Twitter, no less.
  • There is a fascinating account of Barack Obama confronting him (though he continued US arms sales despite the war in Yemen) and an insightful description of relations between the crown prince and Jared Kushner, Trump’s adviser and son-in-law – another princeling, though a Jewish one from New Jersey.
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  • Saud al-Qahtani, the crown prince’s chef de cabinet and head of the sinister rapid intervention group, is portrayed as the mastermind of a campaign of digital surveillance. Hubbard himself was sent a link to a nonexistent website on his phone. The operation to kill Khashoggi was launched “based on a standing order from Saudi intelligence to bring dissidents home”, an official told him. The murder was a disturbing wake-up call to those who had been impressed by Prince Mohammed’s dynamic vision for the future.
  • Hubbard’s account acknowledges significant social changes, including the introduction of western-type entertainment, sports events and tourism, and tackling the conservative religious establishment. But he questions their overall impact. The crown prince may be socially liberal but he operates on an autocratic basis. Women can indeed now drive, but activists of either gender are still subject to arbitrary arrest and torture.
Ed Webb

Royal Order Issued The official Saudi Press Agency - 0 views

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    MBS further consolidates his power
Ed Webb

'Apocalypse soon': reluctant Middle East forced to open eyes to climate crisis | Climat... - 0 views

  • In Qatar, the country with the highest per capita carbon emissions in the world and the biggest producer of liquid gas, the outdoors is already being air conditioned.
  • The Gulf States are still highly reliant on oil and gas exports, which remain more than 70% of total goods exports in Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Oman, and on oil revenues, which exceed 70% of total government revenues in Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, and Bahrain. In Vision 2030, published in 2016, the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, promised to turn the country into a diversified industrial power house. The reality is very different. The World Bank shows Saudi Arabia is still 75% dependent on oil exports for its budget.
  • The Middle East is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world. By the end of the century, if the more dire predictions prove true, Mecca may not be habitable, making the summer Haj a pilgrimage of peril, even catastrophe
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  • The ruling elites are all dependent on oil rents for the survival of their regimes. They need the oil business to stay alive for them to stay in power. Their system is based on continued oil rent, but ultimately, the citizens’ long-term interests are with a liveable climate
  • The precise point oil demand will peak has been contested, and depends on a myriad of assumptions about regulation, technology and consumer behaviour. But many people say demand will peak in about 2040, and then decline.
  • the International Energy Association’s report Net Zero by 2050, by contrast, proposed oil demand fall from 88m barrels a day (mb/d) in 2020, to 72 mb/d in 2030 and to 24 mb/d in 2050, a fall of almost 75% between 2020 and 2050. It argued that the Gulf has all three elements needed to switch to renewables: capital, sun and large tracts of vacant land.
  • Opec’s own projections suggest oil demand will rise in absolute terms through to 2045, and oil’s share of world wide energy demand will fall only from 30% to 28%. Hardly a green revolution.
  • In the United Arab Emirates it is estimated that the climate crisis costs £6bn a year in higher health costs. The salinity of the Gulf, caused by proliferating desalination plants, has increased by 20%, with all the likely impact on marine life and biodiversity.
  • Aramco, the Saudi company with the largest carbon footprint in the world, is not trying to diversify at the rate of Shell or BP. Indeed, it has just announced an investment to increase crude capacity from 12m barrels a day to 13m barrels by 2027
  • If you see the lifestyle in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, it is based on endless consumption
  • The region is responsible for only 4.7 % of worldwide carbon emissions, dwarfed by the pollution from Europe, America and China. The oil that the Middle East exports is logged against the carbon emissions of the users, not the producers.
  • The Gulf’s self-proclaimed first mover, the UAE, was the first country in the region to ratify the Paris agreement and is now the least dependent on oil for government revenues. Last week it announced a “net zero initiative by 2050” to be begun with $163bn (£118bn) of investments and a new minister for climate change and the environment, Mariam Almheiri. The announcement came after the UAE ordered an 80-day brainstorming session in every government department from June. It was the first petro-state to embrace net zero in domestic consumption.
  • Gulf states are deeply competitive, so a flurry of news is emerging. Qatar has appointed a climate minister; Bahrain is targeting net zero by 2050; Kuwait has a new emissions plan.
  • Fossil fuels shipped abroad are not on the Saudi’s carbon ledger, owing to UN accounting rules, and the promised internal reduction in emissions is dependent on a heavy bet that unproven blue hydrogen and carbon capture technology will work.
Ed Webb

Opinion | Saudi Arabia sentences U.S. citizen Saad Ibrahim Almadi to 16 years in prison... - 0 views

  • The Saudi government has sentenced a 72-year-old U.S. citizen to 16 years in prison for tweets he posted while inside the United States, some of which were critical of the Saudi regime. His son, speaking publicly for the first time, alleges that the Saudi government has tortured his father in prison and says that the State Department mishandled the case.
  • while the Biden administration has gone to considerable effort to secure the release of high-profile Americans from Russia, Venezuela and Iran, it has been less public and less successful in securing the release of U.S. citizens held in Saudi Arabia. In fact, despite that Saudi Arabia is supposedly a U.S. ally, the Saudi government under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) is dealing with its U.S.-citizen critics more harshly than ever.
  • On Oct. 3, Almadi was sentenced to 16 years in prison. He also received a 16-year travel ban on top of that. If he serves his whole sentence, he will leave prison at age 87 — and would have to live to 104 before he could return to the United States.
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  • Almadi was charged with harboring a terrorist ideology, trying to destabilize the kingdom, as well as supporting and funding terrorism.
  • Almadi has been tortured in prison, forced to live in squalor and confined with actual terrorists — all while his family was threatened by the Saudi government that they would lose everything if they didn’t keep quiet
  • Nobody from the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh visited Almadi until May, six months after his arrest. At that meeting, Almadi declined to ask the U.S. government to intervene. Ibrahim said that Saudi jailers threaten to torture prisoners who involve foreign governments in their cases. In a second consular meeting in August, Almadi did ask for the State Department’s assistance in his case. He was then tortured, Ibrahim said.
Ed Webb

Opinion | Ghada Oueiss: I won't be silenced by online attacks and trolling - The Washin... - 0 views

  • This was not the first time that I had been subjected to cyberbullying or a coordinated campaign against me on social media. But this time, it appeared the attackers had hacked my phone. Just days later, reports emerged that Saudi dissident Omar Abdulaziz had received new warnings from the Canadian police that he was under threat. Coupled with the hate-filled, obscene language coming from Twitter-verified accounts, this attack shook me to the core.
  • Like almost all of the Saudi accounts attacking me, the majority of Algharibi’s Twitter timeline is filled with tweets praising Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
  • Almost all of the accounts abusing me displayed the Saudi flag, a picture of MBS, as the Saudi crown prince is often known, or a photograph of Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed. Saudi and Emirati public figures, including Dhahi Khalfan, former head of Dubai Police; Naif Al-Asaker, a mufti at the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs and a close ally to MBS; and Hamad Al-Mazroui, a close associate of the UAE crown prince, amplified these posts, which led to ordinary Saudis and Emiratis joining the assault. Within hours, the hashtags #Ghada_Jacuzzi and #Ola_Sauna were trending in Saudi Arabia, Twitter’s fifth-largest market.
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  • Although I was the target of this latest assault — no doubt because I regularly present critical reporting about Saudi Arabia and the UAE — the message to journalists across the Middle East is very clear: Don’t criticize the crown princes.
  • There has been a disturbing rise in gender-related harassment and threats against female public figures. The movement for women’s rights in Saudi Arabia has terrified the government, which has insisted on doling out reforms on its own terms while detaining the female activists behind the movement. Loujain al-Hathloul, the most prominent of the Saudi women campaigners, and several others remain behind bars.
  • Last Friday, a Turkish court began hearings on Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder — a stark reminder that justice has still not been served two years on. Jamal himself once warned me to ignore and block these Twitter accounts. Even though the man widely believed to be responsible for Jamal’s murder may never be held to account, we must not let him and those who work for him imperil one of the fundamental pillars of a free society — a free press.
  • Twitter and other social media sites must take action to protect journalists such as myself and ensure that its platform is no longer misused by authoritarian regimes.
Ed Webb

Updating Traditions: Saudi Arabia's Coronavirus Response - Carnegie Endowment for Inter... - 0 views

  • The spread of the new coronavirus presents serious risks in Saudi Arabia, which has reported 2,385 cases and 34 deaths as of April 5. The kingdom is a hub for tens of millions of foreign laborers and pilgrims from across the globe. Especially in light of potential shortages of doctors and hospital beds, maintaining public support will be critical to the state’s response.
  • The dual qualities of firmness and determination have been the motto of the crown prince’s reign. In this spirit, the government acted decisively as the coronavirus spread to implement comprehensive and unprecedented precautionary measures that were largely applauded. The kingdom started by quarantining an entire city and later imposed local lockdowns and a nationwide curfew that includes the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Alleged rumor spreaders, religion mongers, curfew violators, and opportunist suppliers have been prosecuted. Violators of these measures have been denounced as citizens rally behind the slogan “We are all responsible.”
  • a new wave of political arrests offered a reminder of the association between “firmness and determination” and repression
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  • Allegations of disloyalty and noncompliance spread quickly. Such allegations especially affected Shia citizens who had failed to come forward about recent travel to Iran and who made up the kingdom’s first cases. But state policies to restrain sectarianism, such as pardons for citizens who disclose their visits to Iran and controls on information from the quarantined Shia city of Qatif, have tamped down some of the accusations.
  • an official statement accused Iran of “direct responsibility” for the spread of the virus, while commentators in the media and online also accused Saudi Arabia’s foes, Qatar and Turkey, of deliberately mismanaging the crisis
  • exceptional actions taken to mitigate the pandemic’s impact on Saudi citizens—from facilitating repatriation of those stuck abroad to providing free healthcare, covering 60 percent of private-sector salaries, and expanding digital services—have mobilized public support. These policies are a reminder to citizens that being Saudi means having a state that looks after its sons and daughters
  • The paternalistic and humane framing of the current king’s decisions treats the millions of foreigners living in the country as part of Saudi society and pushes back against a growing hostility toward expatriates and naturalized citizens living in the kingdom. While the crisis is furthering the Saudi labor market’s naturalization, the kingdom needs the compliance of its more than 10 million foreigners—especially the foreign majority of its doctors—to control the pandemic.
  • The religious establishment’s systematic support for these restrictions was essential not only to encourage obedience, but also to counter arguments that the crisis is God’s response to the excesses of social liberalization led by the crown prince. Even the largely tamed religious police reemerged with its own campaign to support state decisions. However, a prominent pro-MBS imam who called for the release of prisoners amid a COVID-10 outbreak was suspended, providing a reality check for the establishment.
  • Building on its unique expertise in managing the annual pilgrimage, Saudi Arabia’s COVID-19 strategy has reassured the Saudi public and the World Health Organization (WHO). Riyadh has jumped at this chance to repair its international image. It is showing off the growth of its public health expertise since its mismanagement of the MERS coronavirus outbreak in 2012. It donated $10 million to the WHO, delivered humanitarian aid to China, and is preparing potential aid to Palestinians. As current president of the G20, Saudi Arabia organized a virtual summit on March 20 to coordinate on the pandemic.
  • The economic impact of the pandemic is compounding a self-inflicted drop in oil revenues, lost revenue from suspended pilgrimages, and uncertainty within the royal family. Managing heightened public expectations of the leadership will be crucial in maintaining public support for MBS when the pandemic subsides. The crisis is also a test for the progress made on Saudi Vision 2030, especially its programs to transform public services, reduce unemployment, and diversify the economy away from oil.
  • the Houthis in Yemen have intensified military operations over the last month, targeting the Saudi capital of Riyadh on March 28. Furthermore, Iranian-backed militias in Iraq are escalating regional tensions with the United States
Ed Webb

Jordan in turmoil - 0 views

  • Rumors of a conspiracy to oust King Abdullah have circulated in Jordan for months, some alleging Saudi support for the plotters. Criticism of the government has been widespread, especially in some tribal areas. On Saturday, the army and the intelligence service moved preemptively, quickly, and efficiently to round up and arrest dissident suspects. There are no reports of dissent in the military or security forces.
  • The former Crown Prince Hamzah bin Hussein — who at 41 is the eldest son of the late King Hussein and his fourth wife Queen Nur — is apparently under house arrest in his palace. The official media says he is not under detention, but he has released a lengthy video in English and a shorter one in Arabic in which he says his phone lines have been cut and he is unable to communicate normally with the outside world. In the videos, he is very critical of the government for corruption and incompetence, but does not speak of the king by name; he does refer to a despot running the country. The government says his wife, Princess Basmah, was in touch with a foreign intelligence officer about leaving the country.
  • The split in the royal family is unprecedented in the country’s history. Previous changes in the line of succession were usually collegial. Hamzah is popular especially with the tribal establishment and has been known to attend gatherings where others voiced criticism of the king.
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  • Saudi Arabia is not popular with most Jordanians, and MBS is especially vilified for his role in the Yemen war and his flirtation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A coup plot with MBS involved would face massive opposition from the military and the general populace.
  • Jordan faces serious structural problems. The country lacks natural resources, water is scarce, and the population has grown to more than 10 million. Unemployment is high, especially for women. Waves of refugees have arrived from Iraq and Syria. The pandemic has added to the underlying difficulties. Tourism, key to the economy, has been largely closed. Corruption is endemic.
Ed Webb

An ancient pyramid is getting a glow up. Archaeologists are down on it. - The Washingto... - 0 views

  • Although the Menkaure pyramid is a part of a UNESCO World Heritage site, UNESCO said in an email that it was unaware of the project and had “written to the Egyptian authorities to ask them for more information.”
  • a group of archaeologists called the project “entirely unscientific” and accused those behind it of chasing publicity over legitimate archaeological inquiry. They stressed that documentation cannot occur at the same time as the excavation shown in the video.AdvertisementStory continues below advertisementProceeding with the project “is tantamount to tampering with Egyptian antiquities and undermining its antiquity and history,”
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