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Middle East News on Dec. 2nd, 2018


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• World appears to be moving forward following shocking murder of journalist and Mohammed bin Salman appears happy to join them BY JAMES M. DORSEY 2 DEC 2018 0 SHARE • 2Comments • • Part of the ‘family photo’ featuring world leaders including Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman at the G20 summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on November 30, 2018. Photo: EPA THERE WAS A high-five from Vladimir Putin. And for Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi it was business as usual. At home, Saudi Arabia’s media trumpeted Mohammed bin Salman’s meetings with world leaders, tweeting pictures of his encounters, which also included the presidents of South Korea, Mexico, and South Africa. However, Western leaders appeared to avoid the crown prince during the family photo at the Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires – after almost two months of global outrage at the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The only Arab leader there, the prince stood rather isolated at the end of the line, at times looking uncertain and nervous. Mohammed waiting for the family photo at the G20 summit in Buenos Aires on November 30, 2018. Photo: Reuters US President Donald Trump, Prince Mohammed’s most vocal backer, did not have time for a one-on-one meeting. Argentina’s President Mauricio Macri kept the prince hanging on when it came to finding time to talk. During an informal conversation on the sidelines of the summit, French President Emmanuel Macron was overheard admonishing Mohammed, saying he “never listened”, while the crown prince tried to assure him that “it’s OK”. French officials later said the men were discussing the killing of Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and the war in Yemen. Prince Mohammed chatting with French President Emmanuel Macron in Buenos Aires. Photo: Bandar al-Jaloud/Saudi Royal Palace/AFP Similarly, British Prime Minister Theresa May opted to focus on those two topics, rather than economics and trade as her country struggles with the uncertainty of Brexit, the UK’s departure from the European Union. May insisted Riyadh needed “to build confidence that such a deplorable incident could not happen again”, referring to the Saudi team sent to Turkey to murder Khashoggi. The message Prince Mohammed probably took home from the G20 summit was that illiberal democratic, authoritarian and autocratic leaders were happy to do business with the kingdom and the crown prince despite persistent assertions that he ordered the killing. British Prime Minister Theresa May and Prince Mohammad during their meeting in Buenos Aires. Photo: EPA Trump and western Europe’s leaders appeared to play to public opinion but do nothing to threaten their relations with the kingdom. The US president also chose not to have a formal meeting with Prince Mohammed’s foremost detractor, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The crown prince may also have been heartened that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, which Saudi Arabia had a diplomatic row with earlier this year, was the only leader to raise the Khashoggi issue during the G20’s formal proceedings. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during a plenary session at the G20 Summit on December 1, 2018. Photo: EPA Other US allies made clear the kingdom’s financial largesse and willingness to guarantee the flow of oil would go a long way to ensure they would choose realism above principle. The Saudi Press Agency reported after Mohammed’s meeting with Modi that the crown prince pledged to meet India’s oil and petroleum product needs. Prince Mohammed may have achieved his goal of showing Saudi Arabia – specifically himself – remained a player by attending the G20 summit, despite the storm surrounding Khashoggi’s death still raging. But the prince is not out of the woods yet. The kingdom, eager to project itself as a regional and world power, has suffered significant damage to its reputation which will take time and hard work to repair. Just how hard depends on whether the US Congress decides to sanction Riyadh, if the Europeans will follow suit, and on Turkey successfully pushing for an international investigation into the killing. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan walking past Prince Mohammed before the G20 summit family photo. Photo: Reuters “We have never seen Khashoggi’s murder as a political issue,” Erdogan told a news conference in Buenos Aires. “For Turkey, the incident is and will remain a flagrant murder within the Islamic world. International public opinion will not be satisfied until all those responsible for his death are revealed.” He described Saudi Arabia’s response to the killing as “unbelievable”. The US Senate, meanwhile, pushed forward last week – despite opposition from Trump – with a resolution that would end American military support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen, a conflict which has cause a major humanitarian crisis. Yemenis queuing up to get their daily bread rations from a food aid distribution centre in Sanaa, Yemen, on November 28, 2018. Photo: Xinhua Prince Mohammed’s case was not helped by the leak of a CIA report saying he sent 11 messages to Saud al-Qahtani – a former close aide – at the time Khashoggi was killed. However, the intelligence agency admitted it lacked direct evidence of the crown prince “issuing a kill order”. Qahtani has been accused of overseeing the killing and been fired from his position as Mohammed’s adviser and information tsar. He has also been sanctioned by Washington. The CIA claims Prince Mohammed told associates in August 2017 they “could possibly lure [Khashoggi] outside Saudi Arabia and make arrangements” if the Washington Post columnist refused to return to the kingdom from the US. Mohammed with President Xi Jinping. Photo: Xinhua/AP Nevertheless, the G20 summit suggests Prince Mohammed and the kingdom may have taken their first step towards putting the Khashoggi affair behind them. Even if US lawmakers slap sanctions on the kingdom, the prince is likely to remain secure in his position as king-in-waiting. Keeping Khashoggi in the headlines will prove increasingly difficult as it seems much of the world has signalled that it is moving on.
James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies
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By James M. Dorsey
A podcast version of this story is available on Soundcloud, Stitcher, TuneIn and Tumblr.
As Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman tours friendly Arab nations in advance of the Group of 20 (G-20) industrialized nations summit in Argentina, Saudi diplomacy aims to achieve two goals: put the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi behind it and thwart Qatari efforts to benefit from the kingdom’s predicament.
The Saudi campaign is producing predictably mixed results. It is proving successful with nations willing to back it for political, financial or economic gain, such as Bahrain, Egypt, Tunisia, and Palestine or nations like the United Arab Emirates, Russia and China that share Saudi Arabia’s illiberal, authoritarian values.
Prince Mohammed and the kingdom’s ties to Western nations, even those like the United States that have opted for maintaining close ties in the face of mounting criticism in their national legislatures, hang in the balance despite having survived the storm so far.
With the US Congress gearing up for potential action against Saudi Arabia, not only because of the October 2 killing of Mr. Khashoggi in the kingdom’s Istanbul consulate but also the humanitarian crisis sparked by Saudi military intervention in Yemen, President Donald J. Trump has no plans to meet Prince Mohammed one on one at this weekend’s G-20 gathering.
Much like Mr. Trump’s decision may be perceived as a public slap, it does not suggest that Mr. Trump has backed away from his determination to shield US-Saudi relations and the crown prince from the potential fallout of the Khashoggi killing.
Similarly, Britain this week went ahead with joint exercises of the British and Saudi air forces although the United Kingdom has left open the possibility of imposing sanctions if the killing proves to have been government-sanctioned rather than an operation by rogue elements.
One key focus of the Saudi campaign appears to be Palestine and Iraq, countries not on Prince Mohammed’s travel schedule but where Qatar, that has been resisting an 18-month old Saudi-UAE-led economic and diplomatic boycott, stands to benefit from the Khashoggi crisis and that figure prominently in Mr. Trump’s designs for the Middle East.
Saudi Arabia this month said that it had transferred US$60 million to President Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestine Authority, financially strapped as a result of the Trump administration cutting hundreds of millions of dollars in funding of the authority as well as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (Unwra) that supports Palestinian refugees.
Saudi Arabia’s resumption of funding followed several Palestinian statements in the last two months supporting the kingdom’s assertion that it had not sanctioned the killing of Mr. Khashoggi and expressing confidence in the Saudi judiciary’s ability to mete out justice to the culprits.
Saudi Arabia, ostensibly at Prince Mohammed’s behest, had in the past year withheld payments to the Palestine Authority because of its refusal to engage with the United States following Mr. Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the authority’s support for Turkey’s leadership in rallying Muslim opposition to US policy.
The resumption of funding is also in line with King Salman’s intervention in the last year insisting that the kingdom was committed to Palestinian rights, including declaring East Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian state.
It also coincided with Israeli acquiescence in the flow of US$150 million from Qatar to Gaza, controlled by Islamist Hamas, in a bid to alleviate the crippling impact of an Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the region and prevent tension between Israel and the group spinning out of control.
Beyond countering expanding Qatari influence, the Saudi move is likely to increase the kingdom’s leverage in pressuring the Palestine Authority to back off its refusal to entertain a mooted US Israeli-Palestinian peace plan that has yet to be made public but would be stillborn without Palestinian participation.
Similarly, Saudi Arabia and Qatar are competing for influence in Iraq, another battleground that is important to both the United States and the kingdom because of the close ties between Iraq and Iran.
Senior Saudi and Qatari officials have frequented Baghdad in recent weeks as Iraq’s new prime minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi, puts his cabinet together and pushes and ambitious economic development plan that is dependent on foreign investment.
Even though Iraq is likely to balance relations between the two Gulf rivals, it is also not going to trouble its burgeoning relationship with the kingdom by speaking out on the Khashoggi issue.
Prince Mohammed, despite protests in Tunisia, the only country on the crown prince’s itinerary that has not brutally suppressed freedom of expression, and a legal challenge in Argentina, which could curtail his future travel plans even if it does not stop him from attending the G-20 summit, has proven in recent days that he is not universally persona non grata.
Nonetheless, his reception in Argentina by world leaders is likely to be a litmus test of the degree of reputational damage that he and the kingdom have suffered. Mr. Trump’s apparent hesitancy to meet separately with the crown prince could set the tone if indeed the president sticks by his initial decision.
Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and co-host of the New Books in Middle Eastern Studies podcast. James is the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog, a book with the same title and a co-authored volume, Comparative Political Transitions between Southeast Asia and the Middle East and North Africa as well as Shifting Sands, Essays on Sports and Politics in the Middle East and North Africa and just published China and the Middle East: Venturing into the Maelstrom
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