Khashoggi and Ben Barka: Victims of Rogue Leaders or Rogue Systems?

The tragic death of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was an eye-opener, directing the world’s attention to Saudi Arabia’s inner dynamics and regional policies. Yet, in assuming that Khashoggi’s ominous fate was caused by a power-hungry, wayward and rogue prince, this attention has failed to see that what happened in Istanbul was but a microcosm of an entire region’s political saga. The focus, therefore, on the need to remove from power Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (commonly known as MbS) is a misguided panacea for an incorrect diagnosis.

First, political leaders are not born in a vacuum. In reality, superordinate political structures create not only policies and ideologies, but also, over prolonged periods of time, dominant mentalities, prevalent outlooks and modes of behaviour. As such, it is the rogue regimes and mafia-like systems of government that, more often than not, act as incubators for rogue leaders and madmen, not the other way around.

MbS is a prime example – he is the son of an authoritarian political structure, not its creator. Even if he and his henchmen are sidelined, the system will in all likelihood spawn a replacement. History has clearly illustrated that leaders’ idiosyncrasies are less consequential than the nature of the political structures in which they operate. Suffice to say that under the rule of the colourless and politically unambitious King Khaled (1975–82), another prominent Saudi dissident, Nasser al-Saeed, was kidnapped in Lebanon, transferred to Saudi Arabia, brutally tortured and then thrown out of a plane.

Second, in the largely authoritarian Middle East, Saudi Arabia is hardly an anomaly. Whether archaic absolute monarchies, princely states, or republics of fear run by securitocracies, these countries have been, since independence, hijacked by an alliance of politicians, business elites and intelligence barons who impose their writ without pity on nations they treat like family heirlooms. Under their rule, extrajudicial killings, summary executions, horrific tales of torture and human rights abuses have been the norm, not the exception.

It is remarkable, for example, that the hit squad that murdered Khashoggi followed the same pernicious script used by Moroccan intelligence officers against a prominent dissident six decades ago. In 1965, Mehdi Ben Barka, a Third World leader of the stature of Che Guevara and Jawaharlal Nehru, was kidnapped from his Paris exile and brought to the Moroccan capital, where he was tortured and his body dissolved in a 1.5-meter-high and 2.5-meter-wide tank filled with acid. Dozens of Moroccan dissidents, we now know, perished in the same tank between 1961 and 1967.

In the same vein, Gaddafi’s Libya (1969–2011) established a sophisticated system of torture, composed of a hierarchy of multiple units, each featuring command structures and bureaucracy. In Ba’athist Iraq, the system’s brutality did not spare the president’s close relatives. In the mid-1990s, two of Saddam Hussein’s sons-in-law who had defected to neighbouring Jordan were promised immunity; both were eliminated immediately upon their return.

Torture is the modus operandi even in the region’s less brutal authoritarian regimes. When the CIA asked Omar Soliman, director of Egypt’s intelligence apparatus under the rule of President Hosni Mubarak (1981–2011), for a DNA sample from the brother of Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri, he said, ‘It’s no problem. We’ll just cut the brother’s arm off and send it to you.’

While these regimes project an image of being imperfect but improving, to believe this would be to take the drapery for the substance. These cases, and countless others, form a pattern that reveals what lies behind the façade of modern-day governance, vast bureaucracies and diplomatic niceties: a deep-seated thuggish mentality. In essence, these regimes share, to a striking degree, many of the predatory characteristics of criminal gangs, including the reliance upon violence and intimidation to resolve differences, personal rule underpinned by secrecy and opacity, perverse disrespect for the law, and, needless to say, lack of accountability. Under gangsterism, the rule of law is a farce; rulers turn into untouchable deities, polity is an act of collusion, security agencies are the only functioning institutions, and fear, immense and pervasive, reigns.

Marred by illegitimacy and wary of dissent, politics in the Middle East has not been about allocation (who gets what when) or competition among social forces within a legal framework, but rather, primarily, about control and order. To compensate for the legitimacy deficit, ruling elites – sheikhs, party nomenklaturas, military juntas and plutocrats – have resorted to religious rhetoric, revolutionary fervour, nationalist myths or fake historicity. As a result, the study of Arab politics has become, inescapably, an inquiry into corruption and pretence, a study of holy slogans and unholy practices, of dramatised theatrics and fluxes of despair, of deep seasons of killings punctuated by false dawns – in short, of great nations lost to repression and plunder cloaked in trappings of pomp and an air of political symbology.

The sooner these regimes, which fare terribly on indices measuring corruption, human rights and the rule of law, are reformed, the better. Their stupendous ceremonials at home, official politesse at international forums, and public relations campaigns in Western capitals, now so de rigueur, should not blind us to the fact that the rule of gangs, or quasi-gangs, is immoral, dangerous, and very costly at every level.

If the Khashoggi tragedy is seen as the climax of an encounter between a courageous journalist and an unprincipled politician, it will be repeated over and over again, as it has been countless times in the modern history of the Middle East. Only in context can the full picture be seen, the correct diagnosis made and the right remedy devised.

Nael Shama

* This essay appeared first on London School of Economics’ Middle East Centre blog on February 13, 2019.

Photo: Photo of Brasserie Lipp, with a plaque remembering Mehdi Ben Barka’s disappearance.

The Scourge of Petrodollars

The Middle East, perhaps more than anywhere else, is a region of contrasts and contradictions, the kind that life throws our way to teach lessons and lift the fog of ignorance. One of those popped up last month when the New York Times spared no detail in describing the world’s most expensive home, a chateau near Versailles owned by the Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman. With text and image, the article described at length the exquisite chateau and its 57-acre landscaped park: ceilings adorned with chandeliers and fresco paintings, Carrara marble statues, an underwater chamber with fish swimming overhead, and the park’s gold-leafed fountain and hedged labyrinth. An earthly paradise, no doubt.       

In his short-yet-speedy ascent to power, which included his appointment as minister of defense in 2015 and as crown prince last June, Mohamed bin Salman (often referred to by the English acronym MBS) has exhibited a penchant for a lavish lifestyle and splurge spending. The list of splashy purchases he made over the past two years includes a $500 million yacht, the record-breaking $450 million “Salvator Mundi” painting by Leonardo da Vinci and that $300 million French mansion. Rather ironically, MBS acquired these extravagances against the background of a Saudi budget deficit totaling 297 billion riyals in 2016; growing poverty and high youth unemployment; the recent detention of hundreds of businessmen and princes on opaque anti-graft charges; and massive spending on a pointless war on Yemen.

In foreign relations, MBS (the de facto Saudi ruler since 2015) has wrought havoc on a regional cauldron already bubbling with volatile conflicts and pressures. Under his direct leadership, Saudi Arabia blockaded Qatar, reportedly attempted a coup in Doha, forced Lebanon’s prime minister to resign and kept him against his will in Riyadh, intensified a cold war against Iran and waged a ruthless war against the Arab world’s poorest country, Yemen. 

Yemen has borne the brunt of Saudi military might, but it has also exposed its folly. It is estimated that the war in Yemen costs the Saudi budget around $200 million daily. The Saudis tout that their efforts are aimed at supporting Yemen’s legitimate government and defending the region from the spectre of Iranian expansionism, but the grim realities on the ground put their words to shame. As a result of nearly three years of intense aerial bombardment and a naval blockade, Yemen - already plagued for many years by poverty and instability - has plunged into the abyss of total collapse.

Since the Saudi war on Yemen began in 2005, at least 13,000 civilians have been killed, more than three million people have been displaced, and the country has been hit by the largest worldwide outbreak of cholera in five decades. Today, of 28 million Yemenis, around 20 million (71 percent) are in need of some humanitarian assistance, including 17 million who are considered food insecure and 14 million who do not have access to safe drinking water or sanitation. With around 7 million Yemenis just “a single step away from famine,” the country is facing a famine “of biblical proportions” warned one prominent aid worker.    

If we juxtapose these two images - the joie de vivre of the Saudi crown prince and the hellish misery resulting from the war he wages - a thorny question will inevitably hover in the air: Other than towards securing a luxurious life for the ruling family and bankrolling military adventures in the region, where has the largest inflow of wealth in the modern history of the Arab World gone? These windfall gains began pouring on Saudi coffers in the 1930s. A 1945 State Department memo described the discovery of oil in Saudi Arabia as “one of the greatest material prizes in world history.”

Yet, rather than focusing on enlightenment, social progress and human development, the ‘black gold’ was invested in power, its building, consolidation and projection. To be sure, the new wealth elevated Saudi Arabia in the scales of power from a playground - where regional and international forces grappled with each other in pursuit of influence - to a major player to be reckoned with on the regional and global stage. But then what? What has this massive political and economic power brought? The untold truth in regional discourses, the elephant in the room, is that the largest windfalls bestowed on the Middle East in modern history have been a curse in disguise, and a major source of misery in the region. 

Since it was founded, Saudi Arabia has been ruled by a single family. The rule of the country and control of its riches have been passed down from one generation to the next like a family heirloom. The Saudis forged a drab state at odds with the order of modern nations. Its buildings, freeways, shopping malls and cars may be modern and fancy, but they are just a façade hiding an archaic polity. The ruling family has opted for a sociopolitical system that is allied to the ulema; protected by a network of draconian security agencies that show no mercy towards dissidents; steeped in nepotism and influence-peddling; wedded to obscurantism; and that asserts its presence in world politics using the power of Riyalpolitik.   

Worse still, at the heart of this peculiar regime – depicted by one political scholar as a “pious kleptocracy” - is a culture that harbors a deep animosity towards liberties and any form of bottom-up change. This hostility has been so powerful - as though freedom is a plague from which one should take refuge - that it has shaped the genes of this state, both politically and culturally. Of course, in the Arab world most, if not all, regimes tend to oppose reform, but the ruling Saudi family has the financial means to bail out autocrats, give them the kiss of life when threatened, and, if necessary, replace them with other subservient autocrats in order to buoy their regimes and the region’s club of despots.

This explains why numerous despots who were swept out of office (such as Idi Amin of Uganda and Tunisia’s Ben Ali) have found in Riyadh a comfortable haven. Deep down, this was a gesture of fidelity to fellow dictators, companions of the road who keep the regional order running as it is, corrupt and undemocratic. It also shows indifference, even subtle contempt, to the people who endured agony and despair under the rule of these dictators.  

Unsurprisingly, then, the Kingdom was, almost by instinct, unalterably opposed to the voices of the Arab street clamoring for liberty in the potent 2011 wave of protests, the Arab Spring. The calls for reform in Tunis, Cairo, Sana’a and Manama jolted Saudi Arabia into immediate action, spending massively in support of embattled dictators and digging in for a long fight against the forces of change. From day one, Saudi Arabia became the Arab Spring’s foremost enemy. Not only did it support the dictators up to the hilt, but it also encouraged regional and international powers to toe the same line. This belligerent posture soured Riyadh’s longstanding relations with Washington. President Obama, the oil princes thought, did so little to save Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Tunisia’s Ben Ali, who, lest we forget, had killed hundreds of peaceful protestors under the gaze of the world.

Culturally, the kingdom’s conservatism has undermined the efforts of liberal religious reformers in Egypt and the Levant, attempting to renew the religious discourse and reconcile Islam with modernity. Much has been written about the Islamic Republic of Iran’s attempts to export its “revolution”, but much less about Saudi Arabia’s export of its Islamic “ideology.” Based on a marriage of power between the ruling family and the clerics, the kingdom has espoused a narrow, dogmatic and ultra-conservative variant of Islam, Wahabism. Not only is this version pitted against modernism, against life itself, but it is also against the true principles of Islam.   

To buttress its image among Muslims as the voice of Islam and “the guardian of the holy mosques,” and to gain political currency, Saudi Arabia made a concerted effort to spread this narrow understanding to Muslim-majority countries In the Arab world, Africa, and East and Central Asia. Decades of massive funding to charities, mosques, learning centers and, in Pakistan and Bosnia, madrassas and training camps run by zealot Wahhabis produced generations of young Muslims who loathe nonbelievers, view women as a source of fitnah (temptation or affliction), and consider armed struggle to be the panacea for all ills. Similarly, years of generous support for the “mujahedeen” in Afghanistan bred Al-Qaeda, which orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, and which has morphed into what is now known as global jihad.   

To add insult to injury, Saudi Arabia has in recent years been heaping oil on the fire of sectarian strife, adding an unnecessary cause of unrest to a region already awash with conflict and instability. This owes itself to the intense Saudi rivalry with Iran, which has possessed the new generation of Saudi rulers. MBS, in particular, has exhibited an increasing appetite for war, risk-taking and harnessing sectarianism to win allies and roll back Iranian influence. Today, nearly all civil conflicts in the region, especially in Yemen and Syria, have turned into quintessentially proxy wars between Riyadh and Tehran loaded with a heavy dose of sectarian overtures.    

***

Various scholars have championed the argument that Saudi Arabia is fated for a quick collapse. Renowned British historian Robert Lacey heralded his best-seller book on the Kingdom by a harsh statement: “In theory, Saudi Arabia should not exist—its survival defies the laws of logic and history.” But it, and alas continued to use its vast wealth to back dictators, hamper change, toy with the fates of other nations, ignite sectarianism and spread a radical version of Islam. Saudi Arabia is certainly not the only source of evil in a region caught in the grip of numerous misfortunes. However, if these practices go on unabated, can a democratic, progressive and non-sectarian Arab world ever see the light of day?   

Nael Shama

* This essay appeared in The New Arab (English) on January 31, 2018. 

A New Middle East?

Peering into the state of affairs in the Middle East reveals that the region might be on the verge of sea change. On various levels, and in several subsystems, a significant remoulding of maps, alliances and norms seems to be on the horizon. In this Middle East in flux, fundamental alliances are crumbling, old paths are being abandoned, political articles of faith are questioned, new plots and schemes are planned, emerging actors that don’t play it safe are asserting their presence, and traditional powers are groping to find their way amid increasing difficulties.

The winds of change are blowing in all directions. The contours of some of these changes already manifested themselves in the crisis that erupted last June between the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain on one hand and Qatar on the other. The standoff demonstrated that small Middle Eastern states that strive to punch above their weight have become regional forces to be reckoned with. In essence, the crisis was a testimony to the rising power of Qatar and the UAE: the former has proved influential enough to trigger the enforcement of a political and economic blockade by four more powerful states; the latter has led the anti-Qatar coalition and strove to push Doha out of the fold.

The crisis also marked the demise of the role of regional institutions, such as the Gulf Cooperation Council and the Arab League (AL), and their replacement by other, less formal and institutionalized, groupings. For instance, instead of its traditional reliance on the AL and the Organization of Islamic Conference, Saudi Arabia has preferred to work within the so-called Arab Alliance in Yemen, and the Quartet in regional politics. If this trend continues, which seems like the case, these institutions run the risk of descending into total irrelevance.     

In Gaza, an unanticipated political warming of relations between Hamas and its erstwhile bitter rival, Fateh’s former security honcho Mohamed Dahlan, has been in the making for months. According to the plan, whose full details are still unclear, Dahlan will return from his exile in the UAE to become prime minister of Gaza, Hamas will retain its control of the security file and Egypt will reopen the Rafah Crossing. Obviously, the step is taken in open defiance of Fateh and the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, with which Dahlan has been at loggerheads for many years.

If finalized, the new arrangement - which is mediated by Egypt, financed by the UAE and indirectly backed by the United States - would significantly reshape Palestinian politics. It would reinforce the current division between Gaza and the West Bank, and undermine the influence of Abbas over Palestinian political and armed factions. It would also subject solid regional alliances to a drastic reconfiguration. News of the plan have already drawn the ire of Abbas and strained Cairo’s longstanding relations with Fateh,

Yet, the most striking outcome of this deal is that it might turn the cautious rapprochement between Hamas and Egypt into a substantial alliance, an unthinkable development in light of the antagonism and mistrust that have governed their relations over the past decades. Hamas has already tightened its control of the Egypt border, and organized a huge rally to declare its support for the Egyptian army in its war against terrorism. In return, Cairo has, as scholar Michele Dunne explained, “abandoned earlier efforts to isolate or crush Hamas,” the Palestinian offshoot of its domestic nemesis, the Muslim Brotherhood.     

Meanwhile, another political storm may be gathering in the heart of the Arab world. A final solution for the Palestinian question - the “ultimate deal” in the words of Donald Trump, or the “deal of the century” as the Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi dubbed it – has slowly come to the surface. It has apparently gained currency in Washington and Arab capitals in recent months. US and Middle Eastern leaders have not explained what exactly is meant by these terms, and whether they describe a workable short-term framework agreement or just a distant long-term objective. However, media reports indicate that the plan offers a formula to solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict that involves the entire Arab world, and imply that it would radically transform both Middle Eastern politics and geography. According to these reports, the vision includes the establishment of a Palestinian state in Gaza, which would include parts of northern Sinai, and would accommodate Palestinian refugees. Israel would in return concede parts of its territory to Egypt. Full normalization between Israel and Arab states would ensue, which might pave the way for the formation of an Israel-Sunni Arab coalition against Iran.        

Concurrently, the time-honored norms of Arab politics are slowly changing. Most Arab states no longer pay deference, or even lip service, to the ideals of pan-Arabism or Islamism, which have consistently been seen as sources of domestic legitimacy. For decades following the inception of the modern Arab state system, Arab regimes used to make noise about Arab unity, the plight of the Palestinians and the wellbeing of the Islamic Umma. But now they make no effort to hide that realpolitik, not ideology, has become a fact of life in Arab politics. Saudi Arabia, for one, has to a large extent relinquished its historical role as a leading ‘Muslim’ country and the guardian of the Muslim holy shrines. It is now wagering on military might rather than Muslim diplomacy. That’s not entirely a surprise in light of Riyadh’s relentless bombing of a fellow Muslim country, Yemen, and its secret endeavors to develop ties with Israel—both taboos in the eyes of Arab people.

Other crucial developments in the region include a possible rapprochement between two of the region’s leading powers: Iran and Saudi Arabia. Signs suggesting a possible thaw in their icing relations include a handshake between the foreign ministers of the two countries in Istanbul, a rare visit by Iraq’s Shia cleric Muqtada Sadr to Saudi Arabia, and a declared plan to exchange diplomatic visits after the end of the Hajj season. In the shifting sands of the Levant, the Islamic State is losing territory and influence; the balance of power is tipping in favor of the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad who is clawing back territory from the rebels; and a referendum for the independence of Kurdistan is slated for September 25.

The implications of these developments for the international relations of the Middle East are still not fully clear, but are likely to be extremely significant. Bashar’s victory will embolden Arab autocrats and undermine the already meagre prospects of democratic transition in their countries; the rise of an independent Kurdistan in Iraq will encourage separatist Kurds in Turkey to follow suit, and may ignite a new civil war in Iraq for the control of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk; the deal of the century would put an end to the 70-year-old Arab-Israeli conflict; and a shift in regional alliances would likely breed a change in the region’s balance of power, disrupt the pecking order of the Arab state system and, perhaps, trigger the birth of an entirely new regional order. Domestically, meanwhile, a world of difference still exists between the expectations of Arab people and the foreign policies of their states. Legitimacy deficits persist, patience is wearing thin and instability remains the order of the day.

Nael Shama

* This essay appeared in The New Arab (English) on September 11, 2017.