The OPEC+ oil cut and the lessons of imperial overreach

What should we make of the spat between the United States and Saudi Arabia, following last week’s announcement of a sharp cut in oil production by the Russian- and Saudi-headed cartel OPEC+? Shocked analysts and officials in the United States and Europe called the Saudi move a betrayal and a hostile act against the Western allies mired in the Ukraine war. Many see this as a personal humiliation for President Joe Biden, with Riyadh siding with Russia in its war on Ukraine — even after Biden fist-bumped with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at a meeting in Jeddah, in a complete reversal of his campaign promise to make the Saudis “the pariah that they are.” American officials are now considering a series of retaliatory measures, including stopping arms sales and even withdrawing all 3,000 U.S. troops from Saudi Arabia (and the 2,000 U.S. soldiers in the neighboring United Arab Emirates, another OPEC+ member; Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the president of the UAE, had a friendly meeting with Vladimir Putin in Moscow this week).

As reports emerge of Saudi officials apparently ignoring U.S. warnings not to go ahead with the oil production cut, I can’t help but think of the lessons of history. A much longer time frame and wider context may be necessary to fully analyze this situation and accurately capture what it is all about. I’ve chronicled the modern Middle East and its links with the United States for the past 54 years, including two decades during which I also wrote books on archaeology and the Roman Empire in the region. With that much history in mind, the immediate issues here are no doubt important, evolving according to many factors beyond oil prices: Ukraine, the upcoming U.S. elections in November, Arab worries about Iran, and the roles of Russia and China in the Middle East. But they may not be the best frame in which to appreciate these furies.

https://agenceglobal.com/2022/10/17/rami-g-khouri-the-opec-oil-cut-and-the-lessons-of-imperial-overreach/

 

MBS: despot in the desert

No one wanted to play football with Muhammad bin Salman. Sure, the boy was a member of Saudi Arabia’s royal family, but so were 15,000 other people. His classmates preferred the company of his cousins, who were higher up the assumed order of succession, a childhood acquaintance recalls. As for the isolated child who would one day become crown prince, a family friend recounts hearing him called “little Saddam”.

Home life was tricky for bin Salman, too (he is now more commonly known by his initials, mbs). His father, Salman, already had five sons with his first wife, an educated woman from an elite urban family. mbs’s mother, Salman’s third wife, was a tribeswoman. When mbs visited the palace where his father lived with his first wife, his older half-brothers mocked him as the “son of a Bedouin”. Later, his elder brothers and cousins were sent to universities in America and Britain. The Bedouin offspring of Prince Salman stayed in Riyadh to attend King Saud University.

As young adults, the royals sometimes cruised on superyachts together; mbs was reportedly treated like an errand boy, sent onshore to buy cigarettes. A photo from one of these holidays shows a group of 16 royals posing on a yacht-deck in shorts and sunglasses, the hills of the French Riviera behind them. In the middle is mbs’s cousin, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a billionaire investor dubbed “the Arabian Warren Buffett”. mbs, tall and broad-shouldered in a white t-shirt, is pushed to the farthest edge.

https://www.economist.com/1843/2022/07/28/mbs-despot-in-the-desert

 

Between Jamal Khashoggi and Shireen Abu Akleh

Jamal Kashoggi and Shireen Abu Akleh were well-known journalists who were killed in the line of duty. There are many differences between the horrific, premeditated murder of the Saudi journalist and the killing of the Palestinian one, the circumstances of which have not yet been fully established. But more than a month after Abu Akleh’s death it can be said with near certainty that her killers knew that she was a journalist and killed her for it, just like the people who killed her Saudi colleague.

For this reason, we mustn’t allow her death to sink into oblivion, as is now happening, without finding the people responsible for it. The crime was less shocking in its circumstances than the murder of Khashoggi, but it was a serious crime nevertheless. It must not remain one devoid of guilty and responsible parties.

There is no chance that the person who knew to aim his weapon at the only exposed spot on Abu Akleh’s neck, between her helmet and her protective vest, did not see the prominent letters on her chest, and that of her colleagues, identifying them as journalists. He meant to kill a journalist, even if the IDF spokesperson tries to argue otherwise. Like the IDF, Saudi Arabia denied for a long time that it had murdered Khashoggi, claiming that he had died in a “brawl.”

https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/between-jamal-khashoggi-and-shireen-abu-akleh/

 

Boris Johnson is rehabilitating Mohammed bin Salman with his servile visit to Saudi Arabia

Nobody has ever accused Boris Johnson of having an over-delicate sense of political smell when it comes to dealing with toxic leaders, so it is unsurprising that he is playing an active role in enabling crown prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, to escape from his status as an international pariah.

The justification for rehabilitating MBS is that more Saudi oil is needed to combat President Vladimir Putin by freeing Europe from dependence on Russian crude. Johnson’s visit to Riyadh this week was preceded by the execution on a single day of 81 prisoners, many of whom said that they had been tortured into making false confessions, but, even so, the Prime Minister brazenly claimed to see signs of positive progress in the Saudi kingdom.

Great dollops of hypocrisy are visible here because, despite their different political backgrounds, MBS and Putin became political untouchables in similar ways. In March 2018, agents from Russian military intelligence tried to poison Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury with the nerve agent Novichok. The Skripals survived the attack, but Dawn Sturgess died some months later after accidentally spraying her wrist with Novichok contained in a discarded perfume bottle.

https://inews.co.uk/opinion/boris-johnson-ehabilitating-mohammed-bin-salman-with-servile-visit-saudi-arabia-1526180

 

La libération du militant Raïf Badaoui couvre une campagne d’exécutions

Les 50 coups de fouet qu’il avait publiquement reçus le 9 janvier 2015, devant la mosquée al-Jaffali de Djeddah (Ouest) après la prière hebdomadaire, avaient choqué l’opinion publique mondiale. Alors que l’application de la peine de Raïf Badaoui commençait, une ministre suédoise de l’époque avait dénoncé le caractère « médiéval » de cette séance de flagellation. Symbole international de la liberté d’expression, le blogueur et militant saoudien des droits humains a été libéré de prison vendredi dernier, après avoir purgé une peine de dix ans. « Après dix ans mon père est libre ! » s’était empressé de tweeter le jour même le fils de Raïf, Terad, en publiant une photo avec ses deux sœurs et leur père. Alors que le militant devait être relâché de prison le 28 février, selon le calendrier musulman, son sort préoccupait vivement sa famille depuis deux semaines. « Cette attente est insupportable pour lui, pour notre famille et pour notre entourage. Que se passe-t-il ? Quand sortira-t-il ? » s’était inquiétée le 8 mars sur son compte Twitter sa femme, Ensaf Haïdar, devenue citoyenne canadienne. En dépit de sa libération, Raïf Badaoui est toujours soumis à une interdiction de quitter le royaume pendant dix ans une fois sa peine purgée et ne peut donc pas rejoindre sa femme et ses trois enfants qui l’attendent au Canada. Comme prononcé dans sa condamnation, le blogueur est en outre contraint de verser une amende punitive de 335 000 dollars et a été interdit d’utiliser les réseaux sociaux.

https://www.lorientlejour.com/article/1293543/la-liberation-du-militant-raif-badaoui-couvre-une-campagne-dexecutions.html

 

Saudi escalation: Why has it happened and what are the consequences for Lebanon?

The Saudi decision to ban imports from Lebanon, recall its ambassador and expel the Lebanese ambassador from the kingdom is undoubtedly a disproportionate reaction. It comes after Information Minister George Kurdahi, in an interview recorded prior to his being appointed to his present post and aired on Al Jazeera last week, criticized the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen. The kingdom’s overreaction is nonetheless in line with its policy toward the land of the cedars in recent years, which means that this reaction is not really surprising.

This is where the problem lies. No Lebanese official could ignore that Saudi Arabia will not tolerate any additional faux pas, not even the smallest one. One can of course criticize this approach. But since the Mikati-led cabinet placed reconciliation with the Gulf, including Riyadh, at the top of its priorities, its actions must be consistent with its desired goal. Also, it should not tolerate a figure making remarks perceived as hostile to Riyadh remaining in the cabinet. Hezbollah’s support for Kurdahi suggests that it opposes his resignation, and confirms that the issue goes far beyond what the former television star said.

https://today.lorientlejour.com/article/1280119/saudi-escalation-why-has-it-happened-and-what-are-the-consequences-for-lebanon.html

 

By letting Saudi Arabia off the hook over 9/11, the US encouraged violent jihadism

Two decades after 9/11, the role of Saudi Arabia in the attack remains in dispute despite unrelenting efforts by the US and Saudi governments to neutralise it as a live political issue.

The Saudi Arabia embassy in Washington this week issued a statement detailing its anti-terrorist activities and ongoing hostility to Al-Qaeda. This was briskly rejected by the lawyers for the families of the 9/11 victims who said that, “what Saudi Arabia desperately does not want to discuss is the substantial and credible evidence of the complicity [in the attack] of their employees, agents and sponsored agents”.

Saudi Arabia claims that the 9/11 Commission Report, the official American inquiry published in 2003, cleared it of responsibility for the attacks. In fact, it found no evidence that the Saudi government as an institution or senior Saudi officials as individuals had funded Al-Qaeda. But this is not an exoneration since the Saudi government traditionally retains deniability by permitting Saudi sheikhs and wealthy individuals to finance radical Sunni Muslim movements abroad. A former Taliban finance minister, Agha Jan Motasim, revealed in an interview with the New York Times in 2016 that he went to Saudi Arabia several times a year to raise funds from private donors for his movement .

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/9-11-20-years-saudi-arabia-al-qaeda-b1917890.html

 

For Loujain, Who Terrified a Monarchy

On Wednesday, Loujain was released from prison but she is not free. She is banned from travel and has a suspended sentence which could send her back to prison according to the regime’s whims, whims that sent her there in the first place. So clamorous was her courage, so loud was her refusal to break that it created more of a ruckus and made her more of a liability for the Saudi regime inside prison than outside, so they sent her home, where her enforced silence would be a reprieve for them. 

She is not a “goodwill gesture” or a “concession” to President Joe Biden by the Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman. Women are not bargaining chips to curry favour with your biggest ally so that it continues to arm you to the teeth and look the other way as you commit war crimes with said weapons. 

https://www.feministgiant.com/p/for-loujain-who-terrified-a-monarchy

 

Organizing in the Cracks of the Saudi State

I arrived in Saudi Arabia twenty years ago, as a young girl. Even now, the country exists in my mind most vividly in those early impressions: the stark lines of skyscrapers beneath a blinding sun, the blare of car-jammed roads hemmed in by vacant sidewalks, the menace of armored gates and endless cement walls. Young as I was, my body sensed the ambient hostility of these fiercely regulated streets. I could see that this was not a country built for public life.

Segregation was ubiquitous. Retail and dining areas were separated along gender lines, as were event venues, many office spaces, and even some private homes. The kingdom’s migrant workers were kept even further away. They were both everywhere—laboring in construction and sanitation, driving taxis, manning endless fast food chains, even living in Saudi homes as nurses and maids—and nowhere, muted by exploitative labor laws that deprived them of most civic rights, leaving them vulnerable to abuse, deportation, or imprisonment. Primarily South Asian and African, they numbered roughly thirteen million in 2019, making up over a third of the country’s population and more than three-quarters of its workforce.

I was taught to fear. I was coached early and often to comply with gender norms, to not discuss politics in public, to keep constant watch for the powerful religious police. I came to understand that a U.S. passport—I am an Arab-American—did not protect me from the security state. I once snapped a photo of the sunset from the back seat of my family’s car, after which the vehicle was swarmed by security officers. Unwilling to arrest a young girl, they took my father into custody for an entire, harrowing night.

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/black-hole-kingdom-aziza

 

The Khashoggi verdict is meant to provide a fig leaf. Democratic leaders shouldn’t take it.

SAUDI CROWN PRINCE Mohammed bin Salman expects to be the first Arab leader to host a summit meeting of the Group of 20 nations, in November. But there’s a problem: In many of those countries, he is still regarded as a pariah because of his military’s systematic bombing of civilian targets in Yemen and the brutal repression of his domestic critics. Hence, on Monday came another step in the crown prince’s attempt to whitewash his reputation: the reported sentencing of eight people for the murder and dismemberment of Saudi journalist and Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

The supposed ruling by a court in Riyadh was utterly lacking in transparency. The identities of those convicted were not reported, nor was the crime they committed detailed. Two senior officials identified by a Saudi prosecutor as organizers of the 15-member hit team that assaulted Khashoggi inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul — deputy intelligence chief Ahmed al-Assiri and Saud al-Qahtani, a senior adviser to Mohammed bin Salman — were cleared. It is not even clear that those convicted, who were said to have been sentenced to terms of between seven and 20 years, are actually imprisoned.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/the-khashoggi-verdict-is-meant-to-provide-a-fig-leaf-democratic-leaders-shouldnt-take-it/2020/09/08/340b8478-f1ef-11ea-999c-67ff7bf6a9d2_story.html