In part, this is because last week, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, Citigroup’s Jane Fraser and around 6,000 other business titans visited the kingdom for a three day investment conference, the annual Future Investment Initiative dubbed “Davos in the Desert.”

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) also made time to attend a global esports conference in Riyadh together with football legend Cristiano Ronaldo and other celebrities to launch the first esports world cup, even though the competition itself does not actually start till next year.

Saudi media has been focussing on MBS’s economic reforms and the Riyadh Season, which started on October 28 and is billed as “one of the world’s largest winter entertainment events”. Highlights include The Phantom of the Opera, the Ladies Golf European Tour and Battle of the Baddest, “an entertainment boxing match between top tier talents Tyson Fury and Francis Ngannou to create a memorable and an exciting experience locally and world-wide.” No mention, naturally, that one of the leading stars of the season pulled out on account of the situation in Gaza, Egyptian comic actor Mohamed Salam.

Keeping up appearances

Of course, the regime has not been able to ignore the situation in Palestine completely. In public fora where the war has been discussed, the Saudi regime, like other governments, has tried hard to present itself as statesmanlike in its approach to the conflict and deeply concerned about human rights and international law.

At the Baker Institute on October 7, veteran diplomat Prince Turki Al Faisal made a speech blasting both Hamas for its onslaught as well as the long held policies of successive Israeli governments that he said helped lead to the current bloody situation. “I condemn Israel for funneling Qatari money to Hamas, the terrorist group as defined by Israel,” he added.

The only reason Prince Turki would have made this outlandish claim, which has been echoed in Israeli media, is because MBS ordered him to do so. And that would be because, once again, MBS has been left seething with jealousy after being thoroughly upstaged by Qatari monarch Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, who has won international acclaim for his role brokering hostage releases and Hamas talks, just like he upstaged MBS in 2020 with the Taliban peace agreement.

On October 25 Israeli National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi tweeted, in English, “I’m pleased to say that Qatar is becoming an essential party and stakeholder in the facilitation of humanitarian solutions. Qatar’s diplomatic efforts are crucial at this time.” For MBS, such accolades from the Israelis bestowed elsewhere are likely to be the hardest aspect of the war so far.

During MBS’s telephone conversation with President Joe Biden — the first in the three years since Biden became President — the Saudi Press Agency reported that MBS, perhaps trying to reclaim the moral high ground, underscored the need to comply with international humanitarian law and urged a return to the peace process. At the UN Security Council in New York on October 24, the Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan called for an immediate ceasefire and a lifting of the blockade.

Privately, MBS is a good friend of Israel

As in Western countries, it would be a grave mistake to take pro-Palestinian statements by Saudi and other Arab leaders at face value. As Dennis Ross, a former senior US official involved in Middle East peace talks, wrote recently for The New York Times, every senior Arab official he has spoken with since the war began is hoping Israel will end Hamas’s rule in Gaza.

As a result, such statements should be seen for what they are: a PR exercise intended solely for public consumption and as a backside-covering exercise against future charges of complicity in Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing. Behind closed doors, MBS has long since placed all his chips on Israel and believes — most likely correctly — that his own future and that of Israel are intimately intertwined.

His worst fear now is that, having put all his eggs in one basket, he could see the Israelis somehow manage to lose the war. In order to try and make sure this does not happen, MBS is ready to go to any lengths in private to show support for Israel, whether that means a bloody IDF ground assault in Gaza or ethnically cleansing the Palestinians by ejecting them into Sinai — although, as Maged Mandour explained in Arab Digest’s October 16 newsletter, even MBS understands that this would likely amount to the political equivalent of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi slitting his own throat.

Saudi Arabia suppresses pro-Palestinian activism at home

In order to try to persuade everyone in Saudi Arabia to think as he does, MBS has directed the Saudi security apparatus and propaganda machine to work overtime. Any kind of public expression of pro-Palestinian sentiment in the kingdom, whether a tweet, post or video, is banned and liable to lead to immediate arrest.

Saudi Islamic scholars have informed the population that citizens should stop discussing Gaza. “Leaders,” these scholars say, “know the issue better than you” and “you are not qualified and have nothing to offer… your analyses are burdensome… Trust” MBS.

Spies at the Etidal Centre, Saudi state surveillance headquarters, have been instructed to track down as many supporters of Hamas and other Palestinian movements as they can. Those few who are known to be affiliated with Hamas, if they are not already in prison, have long since been expelled from the country, along with many other leading Saudi scholars and thinkers.

Meanwhile, Saud Al Qahtani’s army of electronic flies energetically promotes pro-Israeli accounts, and well-known pro-MBS Saudi media figures like Saud Al Shammari have appeared on Israeli TV laughing and making light of the conflict. As Sami Hamdi observed in an Arab Digest podcast, Saudi-controlled Al Arabiya News conducted an aggressive interview with Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal, asking whether he would now apologize to Israel. Regime-controlled social media accounts have launched strident attacks on the Palestinians, urging Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stop at nothing to destroy Gaza, even if it means using a nuclear bomb.

As a result, Jared Kushner, son-in-law and former adviser to US President Donald Trump, was able recently to tell Fox News that Saudi Arabia is “safer” for American Jews than US college campuses.

It would be a mistake however to interpret the total absence of public criticism of Israel as meaning that popular opinion in the kingdom really lies with the Israelis. On the contrary, in reality almost everyone in Saudi Arabia is pro-Palestine. It is safe to say that, if there was freedom in the kingdom, not only would massive demonstrations occur on a scale comparable to what we have seen recently in Yemen and other countries, but many Saudis would likely be ready to leave immediately and attempt to join Hamas in Palestine.

Choking off all legitimate outlets for pro-Palestinian sentiment may serve MBS’s political goals in the short term, but it also raises the possibility of desperate acts of violence in the kingdom in the future, whether against the government, MBS himself or foreigners living there.

US government travel advice recently raised the terror threat in Saudi Arabia to “Reconsider travel,” and US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin has warned of escalation across the region. “In fact, what we’re seeing … is the prospect of a significant escalation of attacks on our troops and our people throughout the region,” Austin told ABC’s “This Week” program.

[Arab Digest first published this piece.]

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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The post Popular Support of the Palestinians Is a Problem for MBS appeared first on Fair Observer.

As Professor Norman Finkelstein noted in a recent interview, firstly, around half the population of Gaza are children.

Secondly, 70% of the population of Gaza, which now stands at approximately 2.1 million people, consists of refugees and descendants of refugees from the 1948 war. About 750,000 Palestinians were expelled at that time and roughly 290,000 of them ended up in Gaza.

Thirdly, Gaza is among the most densely populated places on earth, with about 21,000 people per square mile all living within an area approximately five miles by 25 miles.

Fourthly, the unemployment rate in Gaza is the highest in the world — 45% — and even before the latest crisis, the majority of Gazans were classified by international humanitarian organizations as suffering “severe food insecurity.”

History of the Gaza blockade

With these important points in mind, it is necessary to rewind a few years to understand just how we got to where we are today.

In January 2006 parliamentary elections were last held in Gaza and the West Bank. The elections, which had been urged by the US and were credited as free and fair by international observers, resulted in a resounding victory for Hamas (74 seats) over the US-preferred Fatah (45 seats).

However, before Hamas could take power, Israel imposed a brutal economic blockade on Gaza, followed soon after by sanctions from the United States and the EU. “If we were going to push for an election, then we should have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win,” Hillary Clinton lamented at the time.

Since then, Gaza has remained sealed off from the world for seventeen years. In 2010 UK Prime Minister David Cameron called Gaza an “open air prison” with its people living “under constant attacks.” The late Israeli scholar and professor of sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem Baruch Kimmerling described Gaza as the largest concentration camp ever to exist.

Since the blockade was imposed in 2006, it is important also to bear in mind that Israel has launched a lengthy campaign of assaults on Gaza, targeting not just Gazan militants but, criminally, hospitals, mosques and homes killing civilians, many of them children.

These assaults, which have been voluminously documented by human rights organizations, include Operation Summer Rains and Operation Autumn Clouds in 2006; Operation Hot Winter in 2008; Operation Cast Lead in 2008–09; Operation Returning Echo in March 2012; Operation Pillar of Defence in November 2012; Operation Protective Edge in 2014; Operation Black Belt in November 2019; Operation Breaking Dawn in August 2022 and Operation Shield and Arrow in May 2023.

Between 2007 and 2010, the Israeli military made precise calculations regarding Gaza’s daily calorie needs in order to know the exact quantity of food to allow in. Israeli officials told US diplomats their aim was to keep Gaza’s economy ”functioning at the lowest level possible consistent with avoiding a humanitarian catastrophe.”

It should also be recalled that, over the course of the last 17 years, the inmates of the largest concentration camp in history have tried non-violent methods to overthrow the occupation. In 2018, they launched the Great March of Return. The result was at least 132 Palestinians killed and more than 13,000 wounded, the vast majority with severe injuries including multiple gunshot wounds.

Genocide before our eyes

Despite all this, the Israelis never got close to eliminating Hamas, which won the last war against Israel. But now it seems, the Israeli government has decided to eradicate Hamas and in doing so inflict a dire collective punishment on each and every Gazan.

Water, fuel, food, electricity and medical supplies have been cut off, and 1.2 Palestinians have been told to leave their homes in northern Gaza and move south —  effectively a death march and second Nakba, or catastrophe. At the same time, Israel continues to bombard Gaza with massive and indiscriminate airstrikes, killing (at the time of writing) at least 2800 people, including more than 1000 children. Over one million Palestinians have been displaced.

This is the very definition of collective punishment, what the online magazine Jewish Currents calls “a textbook case of genocide.”

And while most genocides are planned in secret, in this case many senior Israeli, European and US officials have publicly telegraphed their clear support for these policies in advance.

On October 9, Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant declared: “We are imposing a complete siege on Gaza. No electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we will act accordingly.” Speaking of the people trapped in the Gaza Strip, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said “it is an entire nation out there that is responsible … We will fight until we break their backbone.”

“We are fighting a religious war here. I am with Israel. Do whatever the hell you have to do to defend yourself. Level the place,” said US Senator Lindsey Graham. “Finish them,” said Republican Presidential candidate Nikki Haley, referring to Hamas.

“They are not militants. They are not freedom fighters. They are terrorists,” said British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. “There are no two sides to these events.”

“I think that Israel does have that right” human rights lawyer and UK opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer said about whether it is acceptable for Israel to withhold power and water from citizens in Gaza.

So how can we stop the killing?

The institutions exist to stop Israel’s genocide now if the political will exists.

What Israeli and Western leaders have said and done is already enough to prosecute them in the International Criminal Court (ICC), and ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan KC confirmed recently he has jurisdiction over Rome Statute crimes committed both by Palestinians in Israel and Israelis in Palestine, which include genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

On Friday, the human rights organization DAWN wrote a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defence Lloyd J. Austin III reminding them that US law requires the US to monitor the weapons and munitions it provides to Israel and ensure they are not used to commit war crimes. Failure to comply with end-use monitoring requirements not only breaches US laws but also could expose US officials to prosecution by the ICC for aiding and abetting war crimes, DAWN warned.

DAWN also wrote to ICC Prosecutor Khan asking him urgently to “issue a public statement reminding the parties to the conflict of the ongoing investigation there and send an investigative team to Gaza to document and investigate potential crimes under the Rome Statute.”

On Saturday the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP)  — whose Co-Director is Crispin Blunt MP, former Chair of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee and former Justice Minister —  wrote:

The UK government has provided military assistance and economic and political support. Now that war crimes have been carried out, continuation of such support and assistance would mean that UK Government officials would be complicit in the commission of war crimes and potentially crimes against humanity. This complicity, formally known as “aiding and abetting” war crimes, may mean that UK government officials are individually criminally liable for breaking international law.

Now is the time for Western ambassadors, consuls and other plenipotentiaries of good conscience who do not wish to involve themselves in a genocide to resign publicly and immediately, because when this is over no one can say “I did not know” or “I was just following orders.”

[Arab Digest first published this piece.]

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post We Can Punish Israeli Leaders for Carrying Out a Genocide appeared first on Fair Observer.

PalMusic, as it says on its website, is a group of “UK ambassadors for the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music (ESNCM) in Palestine which provides musical education of the highest quality to young Palestinians.” More than 2,000 young musicians are enrolled in their programs.

In the wake of the Hamas attack, the concert has been cancelled with Cathedral officials citing security concerns.

With more than 1,200 Israelis massacred by Hamas gunmen and with over 1,000 Palestinians killed already in the near carpet-bombing retaliation of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Gaza and its 2.3 million people, a cancelled music event in London passes with barely a ripple. In the fog of war and with raw and angry emotions running high this might seem, and it in fact is, a scarcely noteworthy event. Except that it is noteworthy.

ESNCM is a bridge of hope and possibility in a place where, unlike anything ever seen before, the actions of the most extreme government in Israel’s history is determined to deny Palestinians all hope and crush all possibilities .

Israel’s “mighty vengeance”

There can be no doubt that the massacres of unarmed Israeli civilians on October 7 have shown the true face of Hamas as a ruthless and brutal organization. But, as Arab Digest has argued in its October 9 newsletter, the actions of extremist ministers like Itamar Ben-Gvir made a Hamas operation inevitable.

The scale of the Hamas attack and the catastrophic intelligence failures that allowed it have surprised many observers. What is not surprising is the ruthless response of Israel. In addition to the hundreds of air-strikes that have already wiped out entire neighbourhoods, Israel has cut off water, food, gas and electricity to Gaza as it conducts a campaign that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says will inflict “mighty vengeance” on Hamas.

That this vengeance involves air strikes with massive collateral damage to Palestinian families trapped in the enclave or that cutting off electricity, water and food to civilians constitutes a war crime is not of concern either to the Netanyahu government. Neither is it a concern to an opposition which, before the war, was calling for his head and that is now ready to join him in a national unity government.

Nor is it a concern to Western governments, who have promised full and unqualified backing for Israel. While it is understandable and even acceptable that Israel’s allies show their support, what is lacking is a concomitant call for restraint as the IDF seeks to carry out Netanyahu’s order to destroy Hamas: “All the places that Hamas hides in, operates from, we will turn them into ruins.”

Netanyahu told civilians to “get out of there,” knowing that there is no escape from Gaza. Shelling by the IDF near Rafah, the only open border crossing — already heavily restricted, before the war, by Egypt — was reported on October 10, after the prime minister’s warning.

On Wednesday, Gaza’s only power plant that was still functioning shut down as it ran out of fuel. Clean drinking water, already extremely limited, has become virtually unobtainable after Israel cut Gaza’s supply off. The Israeli bombardment has forced the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East to halt food distribution. There is now, it seems, no limit to what Israel will do as it attempts to eradicate Hamas.

Israel’s attempt to crush Hamas will backfire

Israel’s campaign of eradication will inevitably fail. The unemployment rate in Gaza runs at above 50%. Angry young men, most of whom will have lost family members in this latest war, if not before, will become the next generation of fighters. The cycle of violence and brutality on both sides will continue.

Itamar Ben-Gvir and his fellow fascists seek to drive Palestinians from Palestine by whatever means they are enabled to use. Unconditional blanket support for Israel from Western governments serves to further empower them.

Benjamin Netanyahu turned to the extremists to avoid a conviction for fraud when it was clear he had run through every other political grouping in his long career of deceptions and betrayals. Now he is in their power more than ever before, and they will strive to bend him to their plan to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people from what is left of Palestine.

Israel Moves to Round Two of Its Democracy Stress Test

However the levelling of Gaza in the threatened land invasion, should it come about, will not stop the conflict. Nor will the Palestinians be driven from their homeland.  They have shown great resilience in a resistance that is reflected not just in armed struggle but much more so in peaceful actions. In music, for example.

In announcing the postponement PalMusic UK said,

[The] concert was highlighting the achievements of young Palestinian musicians. We support them to learn music as we believe in its power to bring harmony and create hope.

We are deeply saddened by the events in Gaza and Israel since Saturday and for the loss of innocent lives. We stand for peace.

PalMusic UK noted that Southwark Cathedral continues to support its work. The organization remains hopeful that the concert can be rescheduled.

[Arab Digest first published this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post This Is What a Cancelled Music Event Says About Palestine appeared first on Fair Observer.

The most obvious sign — the canary in the coal shaft — was the large spike in cholera numbers. This is the result of people throughout Syria being left with no alternative but to drink contaminated water. First reported last year, a coordinated effort by international NGOs and the three administrations that now control the fractured country has seen the crisis somewhat contained, but the underlying issue of contaminated water remains unresolved.

How did Syria’s water crisis begin?

Prior to the outbreak of civil war in 2011, Syria’s water supply had already been dented by prolonged drought. Indeed some analysts argue that the drought of 2005–2010 was a driver of the war. It was the worst recorded in 900 years and caused a mass population drift from rural areas to larger cities.

Even so, as the Century Foundation’s Aron Lund notes in a paper published earlier this year:

Before the war, 98 percent of Syrian city dwellers and 92 percent of people in rural regions had reliable access to clean water. But Syria’s drinking water supply fell by 40 percent in the war’s first decade, and half of all water and sanitation systems no longer function properly.

With the war having displaced nearly 7 million Syrians internally, the destruction of water and sanitation infrastructure — much of it deliberately carried out on rebel-held areas by Assad’s forces and his Russian allies — has taken the crisis into a landscape that resembles a dystopian nightmare. People no longer have enough water for basic hygiene and sanitation practices that work to contain and control the spread of disease.

A study released by the US-government funded National Center for Biotechnology Information in June comments:

According to the United Nations (UN), more than two-thirds of water treatment plants in Syria have either been damaged or destroyed during the war since 2011 … the current conflict, as well as ongoing military pressure on civilians, have resulted in the massive migration of millions of people into overcrowded, unsanitary, and filthy shelters with insufficient access to clean water.

The study notes that the source of much of the country’s water is supplied by the heavily polluted Euphrates River. In addition to the pumping of raw sewage into the river, oil spillages have increasingly polluted the Euphrates. The pollution only serves to exacerbate a situation which over the past several years has witnessed an alarming drop in the river’s levels. In addition to drinking water, the Euphrates supplies water for 85% of Syria’s agriculture. The levels are now at their lowest point in recorded history.

Western efforts to ease the crisis have backfired

As water scarcity increases, so too does pressure on existing aquifers. Ironically, Western aid organizations have contributed to the water crisis in attempting to alleviate food insecurity. Aid has focussed on encouraging the growing of irrigation-intensive crops. However, using the polluted waters of the Euphrates has further stressed water supply and additionally contributed to the cholera outbreak as people eat food contaminated by the dirty water.

Solar panels were seen as a blessing for farmers bedeviled by electricity outages and the high cost of diesel to run generators to pump water. The panels are easy to install; the energy they produce is free, and they are efficient — too efficient, as farmers who had been limited in what they could pump previously are now pumping 24/7. This further drains stressed aquifers.

In Kurdish-run northeastern Syria, there is reportedly no oversight, either from Western aid organizations or the regional administration, on bore drillings. Neither are there any data on how much water is being extracted. A Western aid worker quoted in the paper “Sowing like there’s no tomorrow,” published by Synaps, observes that “most organizations don’t do feasibility studies. Such studies would take time, which isn’t easily accounted for in funding cycles. Simply put, they are drilling blind.”

Clearly, too, water is weaponized even though much of the fighting has abated. One example is the Allouk pumping station in Hassakeh governorate, in northeastern Syria. Turkey seized the station in 2019. The governorate is severely water-stressed, and the Turks are, according to the Kurdish authorities, regularly suspending water flow. The paper notes:

Turkey and its Syrian proxies have used their control of the Allouk pumping station to disrupt water supplies to what the UN estimates are up to one million people. But climate and geography play a role, too: Unlike Raqqa and Deir Ezzor, Hassakeh’s fields lie far from the Euphrates, which enables irrigated agriculture. And the Khabur river, once a key resource for Hassakeh’s farmers, has been worn down by decades of over-exploitation made worse by hotter, drier weather.

As the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) in Dubai draws closer, and with Assad in attendance, there may be some grounds for optimism that Syria’s water crisis will receive the attention it desperately needs. Weighing against the optimism are the ongoing challenges of climate change in a country that remains utterly fractured by more than a decade of civil war. The president, now reaffirmed by the Arab world, is less concerned with fixing these problems than with self-preservation and the accumulation of wealth for himself and his family.

[Arab Digest first published this piece.]

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Syria’s Divided Authorities Fail to Secure Reliable Water Resources appeared first on Fair Observer.

Their arrest, interrogation, hearings, sentencing and execution all took place in complete secrecy, but Saudi media reported that their crime was treason in three forms — high, national and military. Given that both men came from Sunni tribes that are traditional opponents of the Houthis, the suggestion that they actually committed treason in the sense of collaborating with the enemy seems unlikely.

“High treason” as a legal concept does not exist in Saudi Arabia anyway, because there is no such thing in Sharia law, which — despite massive reform in Islamic institutions in recent years — remains fundamental to the kingdom’s judicial process. While the concept of treason does exist in Sharia, it usually refers to collaborating with the enemy in terms of espionage, but it is carefully qualified and does not automatically lead to execution.

Opposition sources say al-Balawi and Hassan were executed after refusing to bomb civilian targets in Yemen. They may also have been recorded criticizing Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS). No Sharia court could justify sentencing someone to death for refusing to bomb civilians in Yemen, hence the unspecific treason charges. But as everyone in the kingdom understands, the courts are highly politicized and serve the wishes of the crown prince’s regime.

Old Game, New Gold: What Is Saudi Arabia Planning With Golf?

The point is to send a strong message of deterrence to other would-be dissenters and prevent al-Balawi and Hassan from becoming the crystal in the saturated solution — catalysts for an armed rebellion against MbS.

Saudi Arabia has faced dissension in the military before

There have been several attempts by members of the Saudi armed forces to overthrow the regime in the past. The most famous was in 1969, when members of the Royal Saudi Air Force plotted a coup d’état against King Faisal. Their plan had been to bomb the Royal Palace in Riyadh, killing the king and other high-ranking princes, before announcing the formation of a “Republic of the Arabian Peninsula.” In the aftermath of the failed plot, around 2000 people, including 28 lieutenant colonels, 30 majors, and around 200 other officers.

Another less spectacular case was in 1990, when a Saudi pilot defected and flew his brand-new F-15 to Sudan. He returned a short time later following negotiations with the Sudanese, supposedly to be pardoned. He was instead imprisoned.

As Arab Digest has reported in the past, the Saudi army of today is seething with discontent. Dozens of officers and pilots are currently being held in detention. A trickle of military defectors keeps emerging.

In May 2023, despite being subject to a travel ban, former Saudi National Guardsman Muhannad al-Subiani defected and made his way to the UK where he told a human rights organization that, while serving in the National Guard, he had witnessed numerous horrific violations of detainees’ and migrants’ human rights, in addition to the smuggling of drugs and weapons.

Even more concerning for the regime was the defection last month of Colonel Tarek al-Zahrani, who was part of the Royal Guard. The Royal Guard’s job is to protect the King and his close relatives, so MbS is fortunate that al-Zahrani did not try to take more direct action.

The Saudi army is tired, underpaid and unhappy

Some defectors go to the UK, like al-Subiani. Others go to Yemen to fight with the Houthis against Saudi Arabia in a war intended by MbS to last for just a few weeks after it was launched in March 2015. The war has been largely on pause for the past year, but Saudi Arabia still finds itself unable to extricate itself from the situation.

After more than 8 years of fighting, the government has not yet revealed its military losses. (In 2019, the Houthis claimed that 500 Saudi soldiers were killed and another 2000 captured in an operation inside the kingdom. The Houthi claim was not independently verified, and the Saudis declined to comment.)

The war in Yemen does not account for all of the discontent in the army. Saudi soldiers, especially at the lower levels, are generally not treated well. Their salary is much less than elsewhere in the Gulf. It starts at the equivalent of $1,790 per month, compared to a Kuwaiti soldier’s starting monthly salary of around $2,360 and a Qatari soldier’s $2,500, and the Saudi rank and file receive no special allowances.

Before the public prosecutor decreed that anyone who complained publicly would be punished, on several occasions Saudi soldiers broadcast videos appealing to the king for financial help. They said that while they were away fighting, their families were facing eviction or repossessions for non-payment of debts.

History shows that a disorganized army and a complete breakdown of discipline have been the conditions for every victorious revolution. However, there are several obstacles preventing the army in Saudi Arabia from becoming the spear tip of the revolution.

Firstly, the military police are extremely active inside the armed forces, looking for any signs of dissent and arresting people like al-Balawi and Hassan.

Secondly, the Saudi army is very small compared to the size of the rest of the internal security forces, which since 2017 has included special forces, the Mabahith secret police and counterterrorism and anti-terror financing units. State security forces are also much better-resourced, with the latest kit and training. Soldiers, on the other hand, complain they have to buy their own boots and food.

Thirdly, although the Saudi army is still nominally arranged hierarchically, in practice all communications between ground forces and senior commanders have to go via the Royal Court. This deliberately makes it impossible to coordinate any large-scale opposition involving multiple units.

[Arab Digest first published this piece.]

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Two Saudi Soldiers Executed as Dissent in the Military Smolders appeared first on Fair Observer.

Two Republicans, Senator Jim Risch, from Idaho and Representative Michael McCaul, from Texas, are withholding approval from $75 million of food aid to Palestinian refugees in the West Bank and Gaza. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) administers the aid. The justification for their action — backing the long-held view of successive Israeli governments  — is that the UN’s humanitarian aid for Palestinians aids and abets terrorism.

Senator Bernie Sanders, from Vermont and Representative André Carson, from Indiana, led a bicameral cohort of 63 Democratic senators and representatives. On August 29, they wrote to Senator Risch and asked him to release the hold, citing rising food insecurity and cuts to the World Food Programme budget:

Food insecurity in Gaza is already at a tipping point following the WFP’s decision to reduce assistance from 300,000 Gazans down to 100,000 — necessitated by that agency’s overall funding shortage. Helping to assure the provision of food assistance to refugees in need is yet another reflection of American values as well as in diplomatic and security interests of the United States.

As of today, the hold remains in place. A UNRWA source told Arab Digest:

If the $75 million is not obligated shortly, a “break” will be triggered in the UNRWA food pipeline as early as mid-October and 1.2 million Palestine refugees, including almost half a million children, will cease receiving food aid. UNRWA food represents 60% of Gaza’s overall monthly commodity imports; as a result the cessation of these imports also risks severe damage to the Gaza economy writ large.

The source said the next ten days are “critical.”

While President Joe Biden reversed many of the draconian measures visited on the Palestinians by Donald Trump, he has yet to intervene and use his executive powers to override the hold. Writing in The Hill, the Middle East Institute’s Khaled Elgindy notes that “Biden does indeed have the authority he needs to disburse the funds over Risch’s objections. But this will require taking a stand and expending at least some political capital on an issue — the Palestinians — that has not been a political priority for the administration thus far.”

Elgindy may be understating when he writes that Palestine and the Palestinians are not a political priority for a president whose only meaningful intervention in the Middle East has been to take up Trump’s Abraham Accords and attempt to fast-track Saudi Arabia’s recognition of Israel with only the thinnest of commitments to the Palestinians. As Jon Hoffman noted in Arab Digest’s Wednesday podcast, were such a deal to be realized,

regarding the Palestinians writ large, they will as always come out on the short end of this entire deal. And this is what the Abraham Accords were designed to do. They were designed to sideline Palestine and sideline the Arab public or the Arab Street, whatever term you prefer, while coordinating high-level cooperation between political elites in the Middle East who want to preserve the status quo. And that also extends to political elites in Washington. The Palestinians will as always get the short end of the stick.

One might have thought that, as extremists in the Netanyahu government like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich rampage at will and behave more like terrorists than ministers, the Biden administration and indeed Senator Risch would find their absolute support for Israel to be somewhat tenuous. That does not yet appear to be the case. Rather, it seems to be the opposite.

FO° Exclusive: Make Sense of Israel’s New Tumultuous Judicial Reform

Biden, or his secretary of state Antony Blinken, could have overridden the Risch/McCaul hold at any point during the past several months. It is after all an attempt to hold civilians, many of them children, hostage to political maneuvering, using food as a weapon. Failing to call the Republicans out ensures more misery for Palestinians and more instability at a time when the actions of the Israeli government are further destabilizing an already dangerously volatile situation.

As Ben-Gvir, Smotrich and the rest of the gang of fascists Netanyahu has assembled openly collude in and campaign for illegal land seizures, home demolitions and deliberate and daily humiliations such as the strip search, the Biden administration responds by scolding lightly. In Britain, meanwhile, the ongoing abuse of Palestinians has produced from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and Foreign Secretary James Cleverly only a stolid silence.

[Arab Digest first published this piece.]

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Biden Could Unlock Aid Money for Palestine, but Won’t appeared first on Fair Observer.

Then, the Ministry of Minerals in Zambia announced that the gold was fake. The ingots were merely gold-plated and contained other metals, mostly copper and zinc. Officials initiated the investigation as one of international fraud. The race to uncover more information about the passengers, plane and cargo then began.

Using open source information, Egyptian independent media outlet Saheeh Masr (“True Egypt”) quickly published an investigation which found that plane is managed — according to Eurocontrol, which specializes in databases of civil and military aircraft — by a company called Flying Group Middle East, which has its headquarters in Dubai.

Arab Digest has often reported in the past on the UAE’s role in smuggling African gold, a trade that funds armed conflict, costs producing countries tax revenue and has significant consequences on public health and the environment.

Saleeh Masr also showed the seized Bombardier BD-700-1A10 Global Express XRS, which was registered in San Marino to an unknown owner, had recently visited Libya and Saudi Arabia at the same time as high level Egyptian security delegations, while other independent media outlets claimed to have also traced the plane’s path to Tel Aviv. A photo emerged of the Egyptian Minister of Interior using the plane on an official visit to Tunisia on 28 February. 

Who was detained?

On 17 August, another independent Egyptian fact-checking website, Matsda2sh (“Don’t Believe It”), acquired a copy of a Zambian court document revealing the identities of five of the six Egyptians who had been detained. They were:

The film features a bevy of architects, including Peter Cook, who eloquently and at length expatiate on just how extraordinary and visionary bin Salman’s city of the future is. It prominently features the crown prince himself interjecting pithy insights such as, “Since we have an empty place, and we want to have a place for 10 million people, then let’s think from scratch.”

“Scratch” starts with an initial budget of $500 billion for NEOM, of which $200 billion has been earmarked thus far for The Line, a futuristic “linear city.” The money is coming from the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund, which bin Salman runs. According to NEOM’s head of urban planning, “the first substantial population living on the LINE will be in 2030.” The project’s CEO claims that 20% of NEOM’s infrastructure has already been completed.

Who pays the piper calls the tune

Unsurprisingly, the crown prince’s gigaproject has served as the proverbial honey to flies for Western talent, offering large fees and the challenge of engaging in what the film asserts is “the biggest infrastructure project in history.” As one of the lead architects puts it, “every 40 or 50 years there is this great surgence where state, culture, politics, technology all converge into this singular, amazing unity of form.”

In Mohammed bin Salman’s kingdom, what has emphatically converged is an accumulation of power, previously unseen in Saudi Arabia, in the person of a ruthlessly ambitious prince. Bin Salman has control of virtually all the financial levers and has eliminated any potential challenges from within the ruling family, stripped the religious authorities of influence and imprisoned and executed critics who had dared to challenge him. There is only one client, one voice that the West’s leading architects and city designers have to win over to capture a share of the biggest and most expensive urban project the world has ever seen.

Peter Cook, who argues that much contemporary architecture is bland and boring and sees himself as an iconoclast, has embraced the opportunity with apparently little concern about the outcome: “If it succeeds, it will be the new Babylon, so to speak, and if it doesn’t succeed it will be an interesting phenomenon.”

Cook was asked at a NEOM-sponsored event in Venice in May if The Line would be built. He replied, “I’m going to give a very English answer. It’s an interesting possibility. You know, I think they’ll get a bit of it done.” He then went on to say, in reference to the proposed height of buildings designed to parallel each other along a 170 km-long line, “I think—I’m going to speak honestly now, as long as you don’t cut me off—I think higher than 500 meters is a bit stupid and unreasonable. and all our engineer friends will tell you this.”

He opined that 150 meters in height was “quite agreeable.”

Cook subsequently rowed back from the comments, telling the Architects’ Journal, “The discussion of ideas was informal, exploring the different height variables of The Line. After the Hidden Marina is built, I may eat my hat and say 500 meters is even more fun!”

Not everyone is so enthusiastic

The former British diplomat Arthur Snell offers a scathing corrective to the narrative of the  Discovery Channel documentary in his Substack column. “The Line,” he writes, “remains happily fictitious, no more than an architectural fever dream.”

Snell, the author of How Britain Broke the World availed himself of Google Earth and imagery taken between 27–30 April this year to buttress his argument:

Zoom a bit closer to the ground and you’ll find that there is very little actual Neom in existence. A few isolated resorts and a golf course. No evidence of human habitation, or economic activity. Certainly not what could be called a city.

He notes that a photo posted online, taken in January,

shows a lonely filling station and a couple of fast-food joints, near to an encampment of shipping containers, a familiar sight to anyone who has visited the Gulf, used to house mostly South Asian migrant workers. The existence of the small camp shows that some construction work may be underway, but there is no evidence of a city being built.

Snell decries the indifference of Western governments and business to the egregious human rights abuses of the bin Salman regime, but he reserves his deepest contempt for what he sardonically calls “star architects” who, having

bravely rationalised their dislike of feeding bodies into incinerators, public beheadings and mass starvation in Yemen, along with other inbuilt features of MbS’s Saudi Arabia, don’t need to worry if their crazy designs will ever be built. They can earn astronomical fees dreaming up improbable cities, indifferent to whether a team of mistreated Asian migrant workers may at some future point be killed in their construction.

And there is another inconvenient truth that Peter Cook and his colleagues working on The Line have chosen to ignore. Contrary to bin Salman’s assertion that the space that NEOM and The Line are being built on is “empty,” some of it is in reality occupied by members of the Huwaitat tribe. When the tribe attempted to resist the arbitrary confiscation of the land, the response of the authorities was swift and brutal.

As reported by the London-based Saudi human rights organization ALQST, security forces shot Abdul Rahim al-Huwaiti dead in April 2020. He was killed in his home in Al-Khariba in a region of Tabuk province earmarked for NEOM after using social media to protest the eviction of local residents.

Three other members of the tribe were convicted in a specialized terrorist court and sentenced to death. Their appeal was rejected in January of this year. Other Huwaitat have been convicted in the same court and given lengthy jail sentences.

[Arab Digest first published this piece.]

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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Accusations which Assad will find difficult to deny

But the road back has just become a little bumpier for the president as on June 12th it was announced that the Dutch and Canadian governments are bringing a case against the Syrian regime to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. The Syrian Arab Republic, the Netherlands and Canada are parties to the Convention Against Torture, which allows state parties to refer cases of non-compliance to the International Court of Justice, should negotiations and arbitration fail.

A statement from the ICJ noted:

In their Application, Canada and the Netherlands contend that “Syria has committed countless violations of international law, beginning at least in 2011, with its violent repression of civilian demonstrations, and continuing as the situation in Syria devolved into a protracted armed conflict”. According to the Applicants, “[t]hese violations include the use of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment . . ., including through abhorrent treatment of detainees, inhumane conditions in places of detention, enforced disappearances, the use of sexual and gender-based violence, and violence against children.”

It added:

Together with the Application, Canada and the Netherlands filed a Request for the indication of provisional measures, pursuant to Article 41 of the Statute of the Court and Articles 73, 74 and 75 of the Rules of Court, “to preserve and protect the rights owed to them under the Convention against Torture, which Syria continues to violate, and protect the lives and physical and mental integrity of individuals within Syria who are currently, or are at risk of, being subjected to torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

The London law firm Guernica 37 is assisting the Dutch government on the application. Guernica37’s Toby Cadman, a specialist in international humanitarian law, told Arab Digest that, though ICJ cases can take several years, “this is a critically important first step; the process has started.” The ICJ functions as a court of arbitration, aiming to settle disputes between nations in accordance with international law, and it gives advisory opinions on international legal matters. Despite the slow pace of the court, Cadman says he is “looking for progress in the next couple of months” regarding provisional measures, as “urgent intervention is needed.”

Evidence of the industrial scale of torture has been secured through a variety of sources, including the UN’s International Independent Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, its International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism (IIIM) established following a UNGA resolution in 2016, and testimony from survivors of torture.

Collectively, they paint a grim picture of a brutal prison system, which human rights organizations have determined continues to hold nearly 140,000 political prisoners. Since the beginning of the war in 2011 more than 30,000 have either been murdered or have died as a result of torture and poor medical treatment in Assad’s jails.

This is not the time to send refugees back

Despite those appalling numbers, pressure is growing in regional host countries, Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, as well as some European states to forcibly repatriate Syrians who have fled the fighting on the specious grounds that as the war winds down refugees will be safe once they return. This is not a view shared by the refugees, as Kelly Petillo noted in a recent article:

The Eighth Regional Survey on Syrian Refugees’ Perceptions and Intentions on Return to Syria, recently published by UNHCR [United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees], confirms yet again—and in fact reinforces previous trends in this direction—that the majority of Syrians do not want to return home, whether in the next year (93.5 percent) or the next five years (51.3 percent.) What’s more, the number of Syrians wishing to go back one day is progressively decreasing each year, from 76 percent in 2018 to 43.5 percent in 2023.

The fear of return has everything to do with Assad’s gross violations of the Convention on Torture and, as Petillo noted in Arab Digest’s April 19th podcast, “we know there have been cases of arrests, detentions, and forced disappearances” of returnees in a regime that tends to consider most of the refugees who have fled the country dissidents, regardless of their political affiliation. Added to that is the danger of forced conscription into the military for returning males.

The plight of the refugees garnered scant attention at the Arab League meeting despite the concerns of Kuwait, Morocco and Qatar, with the delegation of the last mentioned, led by the Emir, walking out before Assad spoke.

Asked if he thought that Assad and his regime could simply ignore the ICJ, Cadman said “It is the highest level UN court. I don’t think they will be able to walk away. They will have to engage.”

[Arab Digest first published this piece.]

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Assad to Face Torture Accusations at the ICJ appeared first on Fair Observer.

Iraq is back in business, or so it seems

What is apparent to visitors to Baghdad, many of which were at the roundtable, is that café culture has returned; there is a sense of security after years of violence. As a recent The Economist article notes:

Hotel lobbies bustle with businessmen from China. Spectators pack the reopened horse racecourse. After a 20-year hiatus, cranes are in action building malls and housing estates. Normality, or at least a version of it, is returning to Iraq.

As a contributor said, “this is a favorable motivator” for the foreign direct investment that the Iraqi economy so urgently needs. The security comes, at least in part, from the fact that the prime minister, as The Economist points out, has strong links with armed militias—the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF)—many of which themselves have direct links with Tehran. Under al-Sudani the numbers counted as being in the PMF have increased by a whopping 116,000 to 230,000 and given an annual budget of 2.7 billion US dollars. With that sort of backing, there is no need for the militias to use their weapons to secure gains.

The budget released on 11 June was set at $153 billion and it was based on oil prices of $70 per barrel. Given the volatility of the market, that decision seems (putting it kindly) somewhat naïve. Granted, after the Russia invasion of Ukraine prices had peaked to $123 in March 2022. Prices slumped, however, rallied briefly in June last year and since then have steadily declined to hover around that $70 mark.

Oil Now Makes Our Dollar-Based Global Economy Inflammable

In its February assessment of the economy, the International Monetary Fund noted that the fiscal shortfall of the non-oil GDP had widened from 45% to 63%, and went on to say:

With gradually declining global oil prices, both fiscal and external current account balances are expected to turn into deficits over the medium term, resulting in renewed financing pressures, drawdown of foreign exchange reserves, and exhaustion of fiscal savings. This outlook is subject [to] additional downside risks related to a faster decline in oil prices, social unrest, escalation of geopolitical tensions, and realization of contingent liabilities, notably in the electricity sector.

As one participant at the round table, casting doubt on the competency of the budget, wryly noted, “what happens when oil goes to $50 a barrel?”

Corruption is going to be a lingering problem

The al-Sudani government is at pains to point out that it has a campaign in place to address endemic corruption, with 52 summonses being issued in May against former cabinet ministers and serving deputy ministers and governors. The selling of ministerial and other senior government posts has, the government claims, now been halted. The catchphrase doing the rounds, though, is, “you can’t stop 20 years of corruption in 20 months.” The mood at the round table was skeptical that this government would fare any better than its immediate predecessor at slaying the beast of corruption that continues to devastate the economy and attack development potential going forward for this energy-rich nation.

One sign that things are not going in the direction the government claims is the fact that in the budget Iraq’s already hugely bloated public sector is set to swell with the addition of more than half a million new positions. One contributor suggested that the figure could be 600,000, only to be corrected. It was, in fact, 739,000, prompting the comment that the government’s solution to ongoing street demos was to give the protesters jobs.

Iraq Still Feels the Consequences of US Assassinations

Amidst the general gloom, there are some rays of good news. With the more secure country and capital, foreign investors are signaling renewed interest, coming thus far primarily from Qatar, Turkey and the UAE. China, too, is engaged, and Egypt, Italy and Germany are sniffing around. In fact, on the same day as the round table, the Qatari emir was in Baghdad to sign a deal aimed at developing projects worth $9.5 billion. Included is the building of two power plants that will generate a combined 2400 megawatts.

However, it is worth making the caveat that it is in the energy sector that some of the worst corruption occurs. “The mother of all corruption hides behind subsidies to energy, costing $30 billion in lost revenue and another $30 billion in lost opportunities,” went the comment from one of the participants.

Iraq is beholden to its eastern neighbor

One contributor pointed out the powerful presence of Iran in the sector. Despite its vast hydrocarbon resources, Iraq is dependent on Tehran for gas imports and when, as is frequently the case, it falls behind in payments the gas supply is threatened by curtailment, creating even more misery for ordinary Iraqis whilst further damaging the economy.

A $17 billion project undertaken in partnership with Shell to use gas capture from flaring in southern Iraq to generate electricity is being built by an Iranian company with ties to the Revolutionary Guards. In its investigation of the deal, the Financial Times noted “Tehran-based Mapna Group … is entitled to 78% of the revenue from electricity sales, according to documents seen by the Financial Times and three people involved in the contracts.” The article notes that the US is concerned “with the role that Hassan Danaeifar, a former Iranian ambassador to Baghdad and former member of the country’s Revolutionary Guards, has played in lobbying Baghdad on behalf of Mapna.”

Whether outside foreign investment can free Iraq from the shackles, economic and otherwise, that Tehran has imposed, remains an open question. Certainly that is the direction of travel most Iraqis would like to see taken. But, as the Chatham House roundtable showed, there is little indication thus far that the al-Sudani government has much appetite for a challenge, direct or otherwise, to the Iranian regime’s tight hold.

[Arab Digest first published this piece.]

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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After being a pariah for a long time, Assad was warmly welcomed in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He is attending the summit of the Arab League. This is the first time Assad has participated in such a summit after the Arab League suspended Syria in 2011. 

Assad Is Back

The state-controlled Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) made full play of Assad’s political and public relations coup. SANA published images of Assad reading the letter of invitation from Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the president of the UAE and the ruler of Abu Dhabi,i with a UAE diplomat looking on approvingly. A statement from Dubai’s COP 28 organizers spoke of an “inclusive process that produces transformational solutions (which) can only happen if we have everyone in the room.”

Over the years, the UAE has led the efforts to bring Syria in from the cold. This latest effort can be viewed as politically useful both to the Emiratis and Assad. Yet it makes sense in having Syria attend regional summits. In the battle to mitigate the impact of climate change globally, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is on the frontlines with temperatures warming at nearly twice the global average. It is a region already profoundly threatened by extreme water scarcity. So, the involvement of all actors, including Syria, is a good idea.

Indeed, many experts say drought conditions were a significant causational contributor to the war in Syria. From 2006 to 2010, the country experienced a catastrophic drought, the third in a little more than two decades. The drought led to the collapse of the agricultural economy, driving millions into urban centers seeking work. These desperate people rose in rebellion during the 2011 Arab Spring movement.

Sadly for them, the Assad regime was prepared to use any amount of force to suppress what began as a series of peaceful protests. This wanton use of violence proved to be the perfect storm for a civil war that began in March 2011 and continues to this day.

Water Scarcity Woes

Water scarcity is also at the heart of the growing conflict between countries in the region hosting Syrian refugees and local populations. This is particularly the case in Jordan, the second most water deprived country in the world, and Lebanon where water scarcity has been exacerbated by the ongoing political crisis.

The Gulf countries are better off. Their coffers are swollen because of surging oil prices. These countries are well placed to absorb the body blows inflicted upon them by climate change. Desalination projects in the Gulf continue apace. Saudi Arabia has doubled its desalinated water output over the past decade and Riyadh-based ACWA Power has just announced a $667 million (2.5 billion Saudi riyals) Red Sea desalination project.

The UAE derives nearly half of its water needs and almost all of its potable water requirements from 70 desalination plants. According to a UAE government website, the plants account for 14% of the world’s total production of desalinated water. Note that the UAE has less than 10 million people, suggesting that their water usage habits are wasteful in the extreme. Other Gulf countries are similarly wasteful.

Other Challenges Ahead and What Can be Done

Along with water scarcity, extreme climate events are dramatically increasing in MENA. The intensity and frequency of sand and dust storms (SDS) is wreaking havoc with food production and people’s health as well as damaging industrial equipment and vehicles. A report by the Washington-based Arab Center last year noted:

“For all the disruption caused by this force majeure, much about SDS, including how to mitigate the phenomenon’s effects, remains poorly understood and has received relatively little scientific or policy attention. Considering the growing prevalence of SDS across the Middle East and North Africa, the storms’ impact on health, society, and the economy must surely be addressed, and policies need to be instituted to alleviate their effects.”

COP 28 faces daunting challenges from water scarcity to SDS. Developing countries do not have the money to tackle them. Yet it is unclear if developed countries will fulfill commitments to assist developing states in transitioning to green alternatives. Developed countries were supposed to set up a $100 billion fund by 2020, which remains an unfulfilled obligation.

The world’s attempts to hold global warming to 1.5° Celsius is already slipping away in the MENA region. A recent report from the World Resources Institute noted:

“Every fraction of a degree of warming will intensify these threats, and even limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degree C is not safe for all. At this level of warming, for example, 950 million people across the world’s drylands will experience water stress, heat stress and desertification, while the share of the global population exposed to flooding will rise by 24%.”

Sultan al-Jaber was appointed the boss of COP 28 in January. Howls of protest broke out. Jaber is the CEO of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), the UAE state-owned giant energy conglomerate. Climate activists have not liked his appointment. Jaber has a delicate balancing act ahead of him. Skeptics say he should be the last person to head COP 28. Supporters point out that Jaber has a strong record as an advocate of renewable energy.

ADNOC and Saudi Aramco together could have a significant positive impact if they commit to renewables. Of course, they will want to protect their dominant fossil fuels market position while pursuing renewables. This is indeed a tricky balance. Yet if the Saudis and Emiratis buy into renewables, the $100 billion target might be achievable. 
[Arab Digest first published this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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Three years on after the end of its latest civil war, Libya’s political elites have once again led the country down a path of executive bifurcation. This is fuelling instability and violence. Last summer, young Libyans took to the streets cross-country in a show of raw popular frustration. In a country with two governments no one really governs it. 

Libya has stumbled into another year with no prospect of elections in sight. Libya’s political and security elites, and their foreign backers continue to benefit from the country’s deep divides. They have entrenched themselves in their positions of power. They are using their financial and political resources to prevent any change to the status quo and any process of democratic transition. They are functioning as per a mafia ethos that has been seen in many places in the world where criminal syndicates rule their communities.

Armed  Groups and their Fiefdoms

In Libya, “those who shall not be named’ now rule the land and their criminal ways are now a political reality. Any discussion of Libya’s future must recognize these mafia powers and deal with them. 

Since the revolution that led to the fall of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, armed groups have taken over what’s left of the Libyan state. They exercise traditionally Weberian sovereignty over their fiefdoms. Most key armed groups commanders have since taken up positions within the state apparatus, progressively deriving political legitimacy from their institutional affiliations and securing roles for their rank and file. With institutional affiliations and state salaries came an increase in warlords’ individual influence, making it difficult for weak state structures to oversee, control and hold them accountable. 

As per some estimates, almost one in five Libyans is now drawing a salary from the state, including in their capacity as members of an armed group. However, the state has often been unable to pay salaries for months at a time. This has drawn people away from the golden standard of state employment towards the star-glazed life of the militiaman. This vicious cycle of rushing towards gold is very emblematic of armed groups’ elite commanders who are more focused on mobilizing financial resources than on fighting.

As armed groups increasingly infiltrate the political and military tracks of the UN-led peace process, it seems that, in the future, Libya will be a mafia-run state. 

What lies ahead?

There is a chance that political legitimacy could cause the downfall of armed groups as organized criminal networks. As they increasingly draw legitimacy and resources from the state, their social legitimacy could decline. The Libyan population is increasingly disenchanted with the entire political class. 

The time has come for the international community to step in and find a framework for the expression of Libyan people’s democratic yearnings. This might involve more of a policing approach instead of accepting the inclusion of armed groups in peace negotiations. Libya needs a new paradigm, not more sticking plaster to paper over the cracks.

Sadly, we cannot expect this paradigm shift in the short term. The appointment of UN Envoy Abdoulaye Bathily is a moment of opportunity for Libya. Yet the roadmap presented at the UN Security Council in February 2023 centered around creating a body to hold elections and failed to address deeper issues. Bathily is burdened by legacies of conflicts that were undealt with. The UN process paid little heed to justice, restitution and the broader Libyan public. Now the public is growing impoverished, fatigued and apathetic, and has come to distrust the UN mission. 

For now, criminal networks are protecting their positions of power. They are also leveraging the shadow economy to enrich themselves. In Libya, the social contract still fundamentally comes down to economic interest. So, a corruption-prone government spends billions of Libyan dinars with no clear process, checks or balances. 

Libya has the potential to be an economic hub for the whole of North Africa and a bridge to Europe, notably during a global energy crisis. Yet, there is little governance of the disbursement of state funds with over 40 billion Libyan dinars in cash moving around the country unchecked. In the east, an Egyptian style of military involvement in the economy, notably through the Military Investment and Public Works Committee, creates dangerous precedents for the worsening of an already precarious economic governance system. 

More dangerously, in the medium to long term, criminal networks are eyeing funds of the National Oil Corporation, which should be used for infrastructure development instead. The UN’s narrative of “Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration” (DDR) has degenerated into a trope used only by the security assistance industry. It has no prospects of success against the militias’ “core” management structure that yields such wealth and power that even key private sector positions wouldn’t be attractive enough to trigger a willing change in their path.

This bleak picture is but the tip of the iceberg. Organized crime of this scale now scuppers prospects for development in Libya. Ethical questions should be at the front and center of this discussion about the international community’s modus operandi: What does it mean to have normalized having an armed 13-year-old boy manning a checkpoint? Why are Libya’s young boys so drawn to weapons and money? 

Substance abuse is now rampant in the country. Given the long-term psychological effects of war and death, forced recruitments into security forces from a young age, and no perspectives for one’s future in any other field, is that surprising? 

As of now, no end is in sight. Self-interest of criminal militia leaders is still the driving force for the maintenance of the status quo. They are key spoilers who block any political solution that would make them lose power, privilege, influence and wealth.

There are still some avenues for hope, still. The top management of criminal militias do not have incentives to change. However, their rank and file could be tempted to change tack if they had other opportunities. Investments in education and developing a private sector would be a good starting point. If Libya could emerge as an energy hub, then militia foot soldiers might move to lower risk careers.

A UN-led focus on justice, reconciliation and accountability would help as well. So, would better oversight as well as checks and balances on government spending. Cracking down on corruption and financial mismanagement would give the Libyan government more money to invest on education and infrastructure. Finally, the public’s disenchantment with the UN process, political elites and self-interested militia commanders could be a great opportunity for the country. The Libyan people could come together to draft a new social contract inspired by their values that fulfills their quest for justice and accountability.[Arab Digest first published this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Scary Criminal Syndicates Now Run Libya: What Next? appeared first on Fair Observer.

Two elections are set to take place on 14 May—one for the presidency and another for parliament—and campaigning has become even more intense as a result of the horrendous earthquake that struck southeast Türkiye and north Syria on 6 February, killing at least 46,000 people, though the numbers are still rising.

Sensing the electoral tide turning against him, Erdoğan has reacted angrily to public criticism of shoddy construction standards and claims of a slow disaster response – both of which the opposition is trying to capitalize on. The government has declared a three-month state of emergency in the ten impacted provinces, and speculation is rising it will try to delay the election if the public mood augurs an opposition victory.

Opinion polls before the quake showed the alliance between Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) still holding strong, which would mean that even if the six-party opposition coalition manages to take the presidency, it would fail to win control of the legislature. That would make it difficult for the opposition to bring back the previous parliamentary system that Erdoğan removed through constitutional changes approved by plebiscite.

The big question is the presidential election. Erdoğan is still the single most popular candidate in a diverse field. His problem is that if voters unite around a single personality in a run-off, he trails behind most of the potential opposition candidates in the alliance to defeat him. Following the recent judicial ban from further office of popular Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu for “insulting election officials”, the road has been cleared for the Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu to become that single candidate.

The opposition includes numerous figures who think they should be the anointed one to challenge Erdoğan, including Good Party leader Meral Akşener and Ankara mayor Mansur Yavaş, from the CHP. As the oldest among them Kılıçdaroğlu has made clear in recent months that he sees it as his right – especially since he agreed to allow the younger Muharrem Ince to run as the CHP candidate in 2018.

Born in 1948, Kılıçdaroğlu projects himself as Türkiye’s elder statesman, the adult in the room. But the opposition knows that as soon as their unity candidate is announced – likely in early March, when the election day is so far set for formal declaration – the government media machine will go after him ferociously. They will target him as old, weak, and out of touch, the opposite of everything the government will say Türkiye has become under Erdoğan, and whether young people come out to vote for Kılıçdaroğlu is a serious question. They will also brand him as a “soft-on-terror” risk to national security secretly wooing the pro-Kurdish Democratic People’s Party (HDP), which recently said it will run its own presidential candidate.

Finally, the government is likely to play the sectarian card. Kılıçdaroğlu is an Alevi of Kurdish origin. The AKP has made heavy use of Sunni identity as a political weapon in the past, especially during the Syrian civil war when Erdoğan and pro-AKP media depicted the conflict as a jihad against an Alawite regime led by deviants in faith.

A still-functioning democracy

The other big question hanging over the election is, will the government try to rig the vote in any way? The trend of recent elections has been to push the envelope as far as possible. The voting process is heavily monitored in the major urban centers. But out in the provinces, especially the southeast, it becomes difficult to follow what’s happening inside polling stations during and after voting hours. The government also has complete control of the process through its electoral commission, which has made a habit of providing immediate announcements to the state news agency that become etched in stone. And there is the wild card of not only the high numbers of undecided voters but Turks abroad, whose votes could be made to take Erdoğan over the line if things are looking dubious.

Despite all that, the AKP lost two significant elections in 2019, for the mayorships of Istanbul and Ankara. In the case of Istanbul, Ekrem İmamoğlu won even after the government convinced a court to overturn the first vote and hold it again. Türkiye’s elections still operate within the broad margins of what happens in the functioning democracies, without slipping into the kabuki theater of countries like Egypt.

Beyond that, how significant would Erdoğan’s fall be? On foreign policy, the “sea change” that sees Türkiye throw itself back into the arms of NATO and Washington after a tense two decades seems far-fetched, as the popularity of Erdoğan’s stance over Swedish Quran-burning suggests. A whole generation of Turks have grown up used to a country that presents itself as a regional if not global power, and one that like Nasserist Egypt operates within diverse spheres of influence – in Türkiye’s case, the Muslim Middle Eastern, the Eurasian and the Western. No government can just toss that thinking out overnight. For one, Eurasianism was already a strong current in the military and has only gained ground under Erdoğan.

Second, fixing Türkiye’s dire economic problems via Western financial institutions will come at a price that compromises the newly won foreign policy independence. Even if the next government yanks up interest rates to rein in the spending power of ordinary people, it may well balk at a return to hot money in Turkish financial markets and the thought of IMF help to deal with debt. Membership of a Global South that wants to de-dollarize could still count for something in official thinking, although the temptation to follow the neoliberal script will be real.

Thirdly, few Turks want a return to the system of military guardianship and occasional overt junta-rule that Erdoğan scored a historic success in overturning, including its fascistic rules against conservative religious values in public space. Protection of the right to be conservative remains a strong pull for the AKP base.

High stakes in centenary year

The stakes are perhaps greater than ever before. This year marks the centenary of the Turkish republic, and enormous prestige will accrue to the government ruling at this important juncture in history. Victory would give Erdoğan and the AKP a green light to push ahead with their project to shape Erdoğan as the de facto founder of a second republic, the most important figure since Sultan Abdülhamid II – forget Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. It would also consolidate the AKP as a permanent party of power, save Erdoğan from corruption trials, and prevent a purge of the Islamist movement.

The ultimate irony of Erdoğan’s remarkable longevity has been the chutzpah of stealing from Kemalism itself, despite hailing from an ideological movement based on debunking much of Atatürk’s legacy. Erdoğan first opted for alliance with the ultranationalists of the MHP in 2015 when waning popularity began to threaten his own party’s electoral dominance, and it’s a marriage that has proven resilient and tough to beat. Despite frequent predictions of its demise, breaking that Islamist-nationalist nuclear bond remains the opposition’s biggest challenge.

[Arab Digest first published this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Turkey’s Timely Elections: Erdoğanism Without Erdoğan Now? appeared first on Fair Observer.

The Texas shale phenomenon brought a huge surge in oil production in the US. We were producing about 6-7 million barrels per day (bpd) in the early 2000s. That jumped up really quickly and reached 13 million bpd by 2021. That’s the most oil any country has ever produced. I think the highest the Saudis have ever gotten was 12.4 bpd in 2020. 

OPEC, of course, watched this development. It first dismissed increased American oil production as a flash in the pan. Increasingly, over the years, OPEC became alarmed. Shale was basically stealing their market share. Shale captured almost 5 million barrels a day of OPEC’s market share. 

Shale and European Energy Security

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To be fair, OPEC was not necessarily losing market share. The oil market was growing thanks to Chinese demand but OPEC was not capturing the growth. The OPEC nations were holding their production steady. And, at times, they were actually cutting production to prop up prices. Every time OPEC did that, US shale would swoop in and grab more market share as the ultimate free rider. This shale monster was growing and growing and OPEC didn’t really have an answer. 

Shale was basically undercutting OPEC, no matter what it did. If OPEC would cut production, the US would ramp up shale production and dampen the price increase OPEC was chasing. And then if OPEC tried to punish the market and punish producers with a big price war by flooding the market with extra production, shale investors would stop investing, those oil wells would decline naturally. And then the price wouldn’t drop as far.

Saudi Arabia Hugs Russia to Take Back Control

The shale sector was difficult for OPEC to cope with. It was making OPEC a lot less effective. And the Saudis found themselves largely alone. Their market power seemed to be evaporating. They needed another big producer to try and regain their influence over the market. Russia was the obvious choice. It was the world’s number two producer and exporter. By 2016, after various discussions and overtures, Russia began cooperating with Saudi Arabia and OPEC. Russia also brought along a couple of other allies with Kazakhstan being the most important one.

It was US shale that led to the formation of OPEC+ and this organization has since been going strong. The OPEC+ countries cut oil production by over two million barrels just before this year’s US midterm elections. This October cut was really extraordinary. Saudi Arabia has never pushed OPEC to cut production when the incumbent US president did not want it to. This time, US President Joe Biden wanted an increase in oil production. He wanted lower gasoline prices at the pump because American consumers believe that the president controls them.

Joe Biden’s Saudi Arabia Visit to Meet Mohammad bin Salman

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Instead, it is the Saudis who have the most influence over gasoline prices. They can increase production and lower gasoline prices, making them a non-issue for an American president. In the past, the Saudis obliged Barack Obama and Donald Trump. When the Saudis obliged Obama, the late King Abdullah was in charge. Under King Salman, equations with the Democrats have changed. The Saudis were willing to oblige Trump but decided to hurt Biden by cutting production and increasing prices.

It is clear that Saudi Arabia and OPEC value their oil market cooperation with Russia. The cartel has become more disciplined with Russia on board. Under Saudi-Russian dual leadership, OPEC+ has become stronger. Before the invasion of Ukraine, the Saudis had more to gain from this partnership. After the invasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin is really the big winner. OPEC+ provides him the best stage for geopolitical influence. He seems to revel in the fact that he’s managed to shoehorn himself into this tight US-Saudi relationship.

The US and Saudi Arabia Drift Apart

The Saudis are unlikely to jettison Putin despite US pressure. They are making a point of making diplomatic visits and taking the Russian president’s calls. In contrast, they made a show of rejecting Biden’s calls last year. The Saudis seem to be signaling to Washington that there are consequences for spurning their Gulf Arab partners. Disagreements between the US and the Gulf states date back at least to the Arab Spring.

As shale production went up, the US did not worry too much about such disagreements. There was a feeling that we’re self-sufficient in oil. That gives us a free pass on not having to cater to our Middle East allies, at least to some of their demands. It turns out that the US motorist is just as exposed to global oil prices as ever. The Gulf oil exporters still remain the global price makers.

Oil Realpolitik Has Returned With a Vengeance

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Saudi Arabia has spare capacity. That is the gap between how much a country actually produces and how much it could potentially produce if it went flat out and opened all the taps. Spare capacity makes Saudi Arabia special. It gives the Saudis their swagger on the geopolitical stage. They can always tap spare capacity in case of a natural disaster such as a hurricane or an earthquake. They can also do so in case of a political upheaval such as an invasion or an embargo. 

In the past, the Saudis leveraged spare capacity in concert with the US. When Washington wanted to invade Iraq or sanction Iran, Saudi Arabia unlocked its spare capacity to release extra oil into the global market. So in my classes here at Rice University, I used to say that the Saudis protect the US motorist from US foreign policy. After this October that might not be true anymore.

Saudi Arabia is now behaving differently. Biden campaigned on making the Saudis a pariah. Well, once he was elected, Saudi spare capacity was less available to the US. We had a really fast post-COVID recovery in oil demand and we had this big oil price shock. And we had OPEC+ basically saying that we’re just going to stick to our plan of drip-feeding oil to the global market by increases of 400,000 barrels a day. As a result, oil prices rose all the way up to $130 a barrel.

Unlike in the past, Saudi Arabia did not bring its spare capacity into play. Not only Biden but also Emmanuel Macron and Boris Johnson asked the Saudis to pump more oil. They refused. They claimed that the market was well supplied and that the price spikes were due to geopolitical risks or under-investment by producers afraid of climate action or some kind of a boomeranging pandemic. So they held that spare capacity in abeyance. 

Here in the US, Biden had to deal with high prices in an election year by releasing supplies from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), the world’s largest supply of emergency crude oil. The US consumes nearly 20 million barrels per day and the SPR is estimated to be over 700 million barrels. This is not how things are meant to work. In the past, the US was always able to tap Saudi spare capacity. This time, Biden went to Saudi Arabia but the Saudis refused to help.

[Arab Digest first published this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Saudi Arabia and Russia Have Now Teamed Up in OPEC+ appeared first on Fair Observer.

Algeria will enjoy a record income from oil and gas exports in 2022 despite not being able to offer some of its key customers such as France, Spain and Türkiye greater volumes than last year. Growing domestic consumption, encouraged by the very low prices Algeria’s domestic users of energy pay for electricity, is a key reason. Another reason is the lack of development of new gas fields over the past decade.

Algeria has a big opportunity

This is a time of opportunity for Algeria. Russia provided 40% of Europe’s imports before President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24 this year. Since then, Europe has been scrambling to find new sources of gas after the drastic cut in supplies from Russia. Sadly, Algeria is not grabbing the opportunity to help reduce most of its northern neighbors’ dependence on Russian gas.

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A recent report stated that if North African gas producers – Algeria, Egypt, Libya and Tunisia – were able to reduce gas from flaring, venting and leaking, Europe could, “within 12-24 months, start to substitute up to 15% of Russian gas via highly underutilized pipelines and liquefied Natural gas (LNG) terminals in the region.” Algerian officials have contested the statistics contained in a World Bank study on which this report is based. It is also worth noting that the July-August issue of a respected energy publication notes that “Algeria delivered significant decreases in overall flaring per barrel of oil equivalent (BOE). The estimated reduction totalled 3 million tonnes of CO2 (which) marks a significant shift for a country where the norm has been a steady increase in flaring over the last decade.”

Further reducing flaring will certainly allow more gas to be produced in the future. For now, however, the more promising route is the fast track approach taken in the recent contract signed by Algeria’s state-owned oil company, Sonatrach, and Italy’s national oil company, ENI,. Italian technical teams have been flying in to work in existing gas fields where production can be increased within 12-24 months. Italy is the only European country benefiting from increases in gas deliveries from Algeria in 2022 thanks to the strengthening of relations between the two countries.

Gas production in Algeria has great potential. Many areas of this vast country have either not been explored or need re-exploration using more modern techniques. Developing a new gas field however takes between three to five years. So, it will take investment and time for Algeria to plug in the gap left by Russia.

Europe paying the price for bad energy policy

For the past two decades, Europe has pursued an energy policy which helps explain the current lack of gas worldwide. EU buyers fought hard to reduce the long-term gas contracts that had prevailed until then. Previously, Europeans signed contracts for 15-20 years with Sonatrach. Those long-term contracts offered security of supply and allowed the strategic development of new gas fields, both of which Europe now needs most urgently.

Another fact is worth recalling. Four decades ago, US President Ronald Regan warned Europe in general, and Germany in particular, to reduce dependence on Soviet gas. He argued in favor of alternative sources, notably Norway and Algeria. Europeans developed Norwegian resources but they argued that sources such as Algeria were no more reliable than Soviet gas. To be fair, Algeria mismanaged its energy sector under the 20-year presidency of Abdelaziz Bouteflika who was in charge from 1999 to 2019). Yet not all blame rests with Algeria. Europe played a part to ensure the current low levels of gas production.

Shift away from the dollar and North African geopolitics

According to well-informed sources in Algeria, Sonatrach has introduced a new clause into gas contracts with its foreign customers since last summer. It allows for a change in currency denomination in each contract, which both parties can alter every six months. The clause gives Algeria much greater control over its foreign policy, notably vis-à-vis the US dollar in which most oil and gas contracts are traditionally denominated.

This change reflects the growing wariness in Algeria and many other countries about the manner in which the US uses sanctions. Many believe that the US is too political in its use of sanctions. Algerian hard currency reserves reached $46.5 billion in July and are expected to rise to $80 billion given rising gas prices.  Furthermore, Algeria’s already insignificant external debt has steadily declined since July 2020. 

Government finances might have improved but it continues to spend heavily on weapons purchases. It is the sixth largest importer of arms in the world and the largest in Africa. About 70% of Algeria’s weapons are sourced from Russia. The rest come from Italy, France, Germany and China. Historically, Algeria has practiced a policy of non-alignment internationally. This might have been out of fashion for a generation but is part of the country’s DNA.

The geopolitics of gas have shifted significantly in the Western and Central Mediterranean over the past year. Escalating rivalry between Algeria and Morocco closed the Maghreb-Europe pipeline, which runs through Morocco and under the Straights of Gibraltar on November 1, 2021. It is in keeping with the acrimonious tit for tat actions that have characterized relations between the two North African countries for much of the past 50 years. 

Italy, Tunisia and Algeria Form a Mediterranean Energy Treble

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Fortunately, bad relations between the two neighbors are not likely to escalate into anything more serious. Morocco has its own economic and political difficulties and an ailing Moroccan king is unlikely to want to deal with a serious crisis with his eastern neighbor. Similarly, Said Chengriha, the chief of staff of the Algerian army,  is a safe pair of hands whose main goal is to modernize the military while avoiding direct confrontations.

Spain’s diplomatic tilt towards Morocco on the Western Sahara issue in March 2022 has soured political relations between Madrid and Algiers. However, it has not seriously impacted Spanish imports of Algerian gas. Flows of gas through the Medgas pipeline, which links Algeria directly with Spain, are currently running at an estimated 10.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas (bcm). Also, Naturgy, Spain’s key importer, has reached an agreement with Sonatrach after tough negotiations. In fact, Spanish buyers of Algerian gas have settled a backlog of payments estimated at $7.5 billion with Sonatrach.

Italy becomes Europe’s new energy hub

North African energy links with Europe were somewhat redrawn when Italy signed a major contract with Algeria in November 2021. This redirected some Algerian gas exports to Italy. This contract envisages the throughput of Algerian gas via the TransMed pipeline increasing from 21 bcm in 2021 to 30 bcm in 2023. Current flows suggest the 30 bcm figure could be reached much sooner. ENI has become a privileged partner of Sonatrach. The $1.5 billion contract signed between the two companies includes projects to explore and develop new sources of gas as well as to produce hydrogen and electricity from renewable sources. 

Italy’s growing links with Algeria are turning the former into the Mediterranean’s new gas hub. Pipelines feed gas from Azerbaijan, Libya and Algeria to Italy’s southern shores and it is also importing growing volumes of LNG gas from Egypt. For Algeria to profit from its proximity to Italy, it needs to modernize the management of its energy sector, revise its industrial policy and reform its Jurassic age banking system. In other words, Algeria must welcome foreign investors and allow private Algerian companies to participate in the global economy.

[Arab Digest first published this article and is a partner of Fair Observer.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Algeria Is a Reliable Gas Partner for Crisis-Facing Europe appeared first on Fair Observer.

As with previous elections, this one followed a familiar trajectory. The story goes like this. The parliament deadlocks over disputes about who the emir has appointed as his prime minister and cabinet. Allegations of the ruling Al-Sabah family’s corruption and unruly MPs playing to their tribal and sectarian constituencies add to a toxic brew of simmering resentment between the ruling family and the elected parliament. After months of wrangling, with important legislation left swinging in the wind, the emir dissolves the parliament and goes to the electorate hoping to end yet another impasse. Instead, the cycle of parliamentary deadlock, bitter wrangling and another election ensues. Naturally, the Kuwaitis are getting tired of this sordid saga.

Understanding the Recent Election

Earlier this year. Crown Prince Sheikh Mishaal Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah standing in for his ailing half-brother Emir Nawaf dissolved the parliament after it refused to approve his choices for the prime minister and cabinet ministers. He was hoping that voters would elect a parliament more amenable to his decisions.  The people have voted in a parliament that is bound to disappoint him. The opposition, a disparate grouping united only in their visceral dislike of the Al-Sabah family, secured significant gains. With a gain of 27 new MPs, the primary winners were Islamists.

The result sets up further confrontations and the promise of more deadlock at a time when the parliament needs to pass legislation enabling the government to borrow from global markets. And while the bounce in oil prices as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine has provided financial relief, it is only temporary.  Unlike Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), its fellow Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) hydrocarbons-rich neighbors, Kuwait is far behind in efforts to diversify the economy away from near total dependency on oil.

Jenan Mohsin Ramadan Boushehri (l) and Alia Faisal Al Khaled (r) were elected as representatives of the Kuwaiti National Assembly, the national parliament. While most commentaries have focussed on Islamist wins and the likelihood of further deadlock, passing reference has been made to the election of two women MPs. Note that no women were elected in the previous parliamentary election of December 2020.

Two Women MPs, Islamists and Implications for Women

Boushehri ran as an independent in the 3^rd constituency and won comfortably.  She had previously served in the 2018 cabinet as the minister of public works and the minister of state for housing affairs. Joining her is the secular writer and thinker Al-Khalid who was elected in the 2^nd constituency.

Kuwaiti women have long campaigned against domestic violence and honor killings. Having two women in parliament may help to turn the tide but there remains a long way to go. After a wave of honor killings had rocked Kuwait last year, the women’s rights activist Nour al-Mukhled, writing for Arab Digest had this to say:

The Family Protection Law, which passed in Kuwait’s National Assembly in August of 2020, calls for the establishment of a National Family Protection Committee that would put measures in place to tackle the spread of domestic violence in Kuwait.… Despite the fact that the law was passed more than a year ago, the law remains nothing but merely ink on paper, continuously failing to protect women who end up being victims of domestic violence.

The Wave of Femicides in Kuwait

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The new law replaced the notorious Article 153 which effectively enabled honour killings by treating the murder of women by their husbands or other male relatives as a misdemeanour punishable by a maximum three year jail term and/or a maximum fine of 225 Kuwaiti dinars, a little over $700.

The Family Protection Law also called for training for those assisting survivors of domestic violence and provision for shelters, rehabilitation and advisory services. A parliament consisting entirely of males, as Nour al-Mukhled noted, did nothing to put teeth into the legislation as they bickered with the ruling family.

It is high time for Kuwait’s parliament to act on honor killings and domestic violence. With two women back in parliament, change may come. But Kristin Smith Diwan, a senior resident scholar at Washington’s Arab Gulf States Institute, makes an important point regarding the victory of Islamists: “If those candidates come forth with conservative social positions it will divide those who are pushing for reforms.” Ominously Diwan added that 17 of the newly elected MPs had signed a “values pledge” calling for, amongst other things, gender segregation in schools.

Last October, al-Mukhled concluded:

More than one year and six lives later, we still see the offhand attitude in parliament and society toward violence against women, a convenient way of condoning this tragedy without condemning and holding accountable those responsible.

To see off that offhand attitude will take more than two women MPs, it will require an almost entirely male parliament to find its mettle and begin to bring to an end attitudes and practices that shame Kuwait.

[Arab Digest first published this article and is a partner of Fair Observer.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Crisis Looms as Islamists Make Gains in Kuwait appeared first on Fair Observer.

Meanwhile, those who are inarguably the real criminals go about their business looting the country unscathed.  These criminals are the political and business elites who have yet to form a cabinet while Lebanon and its people suffer a financial disaster the World Bank has described as “among the worst the world has seen.” How bad is that? “Real GDP,” the World Bank noted “is estimated to have declined by 10.5% in 2021, on the back of a 21.4% contraction in 2020 as policymakers have still not agreed on a plan to address the collapse of the country’s development model.” What that means for ordinary people is unemployment, rampant inflation, the denial of basic services, and the simple inability to be able to pay rent or put food on the table.

Saudi Arabia and Lebanon: A Tale of Two Economies

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The World Bank report came out in April this year, before the May parliamentary election that saw a brief moment of hope. A dozen candidates won who were independent of sectarian parties. However, this turned out to be a false dawn. The situation has gone from bad to worse. There is no plan in sight. Sectarian politicians and their business cronies bicker over the make-up of a cabinet, arguing over the division of the spoils.

Fox in the Henhouse

Riad Salameh, the governor of the central bank, Banque du Liban (BDL), continues his duck and dive tactics.  His latest gambit involves a claim that the Appeals Public Prosecutor lacks competence to handle his file, which is a large one involving not only the governor but also Salameh’s brother Raja and his “right hand person” Marianne Hoayek. The prosecutor is investigating many financial matters, including commissions of $330 million on government bond sales to a company owned by Raja.  Property purchases of $12 million in France by the Salameh brothers are also in question. As we observed in April, one of the properties is a Paris flat. It is owned by Anna Kovakova who was described in the French press as “the mother of Riad Salameh’s illegitimate daughter.” This flat was rented out to BDL as a “reserve centre.” and Lebanon’s central bank was paying Kovakova US$500,000 per annum for the flat.

A 2020 Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) investigation conducted jointly with the Beirut-based investigative site Daraj revealed that the governor holds overseas investments amounting to nearly US$100 million:

(It) tracked Salame’s vast overseas investments, finding multiple real estate deals in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Belgium made over the course of a decade. Company accounts suggest the investments were often financed by borrowing, with tens of millions of euros in credit sometimes secured without collateral…Much of his money went to the UK, a favorite destination for overseas investors looking for a discreet place to make their money grow….

When contacted by OCCRP, Salame said he has broken no laws — that he amassed “significant private wealth” before he joined the central bank in 1993, and that “nothing prevents me from investing it.”

The wily Salameh has avoided arrest despite warrants issued against him. He has been moving between his office at BDL and his two homes, undoubtedly aided by corrupt officials within the police and the judiciary.

Contrast his story of vast wealth with that of Sali Hafez who says her sister is dying from cancer. Hafez needed $13,000 of her own money that her bank was refusing to release. She needed this money to pay for her sister’s treatment. So Hafez borrowed a nephew’s gun and took matters into her own hands.  As did Jawad Sleem who took a hunting rifle into a branch of Lebanon & Gulf Bank and demanded his deposit. The father of seven has been out of work for months. He needs the money to feed his family. Neither has been charged  nor have the others who stole their own money. Six “robberies” thus far have taken place. Meanwhile, as noted by L’Orient Today, there is still a near complete lack of transparency about BDL’s foreign exchange reserves. The BDL’s governor continues with his successful vanishing acts. Lebanon’s economy continues to collapse and its people are forced to take desperate measures simply to survive.

[Arab Digest first published this article and is a partner of Fair Observer.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Lebanon’s Central Banker Evades Arrest and People Rob Banks appeared first on Fair Observer.

In its lengthy and sometimes bloody confrontations with Azerbaijan, Armenia is backed by Moscow.  Azerbaijan is a close ally of Ukraine. In Azerbaijan’s 2020 war with Armenia, Turkish drones proved decisive. The Russian defeat has severely tarnished President Vladimir Putin’s image as a bold and pragmatic warrior. Does this mean Türkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will grab opportunities to advance his influence in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region at the expense of the Russians?

Russia and Türkiye play the great game over Syria

Perhaps this question will most likely be answered in Syria. Russia and Türkiye pursued a “frenemy” approach to the civil war. In the early years of the war, Türkiye heavily backed efforts to overthrow the Hafez al-Assad regime. Indeed, untilRussia’s intervention in 2015, Türkiye seemed to be headed to success in that venture.

On Ukraine, Turkey Is Moving Cautiously Toward the West

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Putin’s decision to support Assad was dictated by fears of losing a longstanding ally and therefore influence in a key MENA state. The Russians also wanted to ensure key military assets — the naval base at Tartus and Khmeimim Airbase southeast of Latakia — remained in their hands. Russian air power decisively turned the war in Assad’s favor. 

A motley coalition beat back the dreaded ISIS. A key player in that coalition was Yekîneyên Parastina Gel (YPG), a militia composed largely of Kurdish fighters. The Turks view the YPG as a front for Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan (PKK), a militant Kurdish political organization and guerrilla movement. Türkiye views the PKK as a terrorist organization and it has long been a thorn in Erdoğan’s side.

Erdoğan’s solution to the rising power of the Kurds was to combine cross-border attacks on the PKK with a deal with Putin. Türkiye allowed Russia to use its air force to pummel Aleppo into submission, giving Assad a key win. What followed was a series of agreements that established mechanisms of control and the acknowledgement of spheres of influence within Syria. Assad was forced to halt his efforts to subjugate the last rebel stronghold of Idlib, even though the Russian air force continued to carry out aerial attacks on civilian targets within the enclave. 

This was an important concession for Türkiye. The Turks were then striving to both prevent an influx of refugees from a besieged Idlib as well as move at least some of the 3.6 million refugees in Türkiye back to Syria.

The 2018 Sochi Agreement formalized the situation in Idlib with the creation of a de-escalation zone including a demilitarized sector 15-20 kilometers deep. The Russians agreed that the Turks could keep their observation posts in Idlib. They committed to maintaining the status quo. In 2020 when violence flared again, this time between Turkish troops and Assad’s forces, the Russians and the Turks signed a ceasefire deal that included both of them jointly patrolling the M4 highway that runs East-West across Idlib.

Advantage Erdoğan 

With Putin in a weakened position, Erdoğan may choose to step up the tempo of attacks on the PKK while reinforcing the Turkish presence in its spheres of influence along Syria’s northern border. Earlier in the summer, he was pressuring Russia and Iran to back Türkiye’s further incursions into northwestern Syria. The Turkish president said:  “What we expect from Iran and Russia is to support Türkiye in its fight against terrorist organisations.” Erdoğan may step up Turkish operations in Syria but knows that the Russians remain significant players and the steps Türkiye takes in Syria will have to keep the Russians in mind.

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Elsewhere in MENA, the Ukrainian offensive and the unfolding Russian catastrophe will give pause for thought among authoritarian leaders who have been fence-sitting about Putin’s invasion of a neighboring country. Authoritarians in the Gulf viewed the Russian president as a tough warrior. As Christopher Davidson said in our April 1 podcast, they saw Putin as “prepared to act upon a red line he’s already drawn…willing to act militarily when needed.” In contrast, these autocrats saw Western liberal democracies as weak. They saw the West’s efforts to employ economic sanctions and supply the Ukrainians with weapons to do the fighting, instead of intervening themselves, as a sign of fading power. The startling victories that Ukraine is achieving with Western-supplied weaponry turns this perception on its head.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi who has worked hard to maintain warm relations with Putin. Right now, he might be asking himself what happens if Putin falls. Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar might be asking himself the same question. He has profited from Russian mercenaries of the Wagner Group supporting him. Meanwhile the Turks, who backed the internationally recognized government in Tripoli against Haftar will be toting up their gains and weighing up their next steps as the rout of the Russian army continues and the crisis for Putin deepens.

[Arab Digest first published this article and is a partner of Fair Observer.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Russian Military Rout in Ukraine has Major Implications for the MENA Region appeared first on Fair Observer.

The Arab Spring in 2011 was the latest disappointment in a longstanding Arab quest for freedom. Democracy was set back years by the failings of the Muslim Brotherhood and the 2013 military coup in Egypt. The rise and fall of the Islamic State, which took Sunni Islamism to its most extreme and fanatical edge, damaged the wider appeal of political Islam in the region for years to come. These disasters have led to widespread disillusionment with both democracy and political Islam, leaving an ideological vacuum at the heart of the Arab revolution.

However, as Mao Zedong said, a revolution is not a dinner party and so these setbacks should be regarded not so much as a failure but as a false start. Given the continued deterioration in the region’s socioeconomic and political fabric and the grim economic outlook it seems inevitable that sooner or later the Arab Spring is going to return, raising the question when it does, what kind of narrative or ideology will be driving it?

Pan-Arabism Again

Pan-Arabism could be the answer. This ideology envisages different Arab states as one political entity and has been around for a while.  So, the new version of pan-Arabism will be different to that of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s, which led to the 1967 Six-Day War. In this war, Arab states joined hands to take on Israel but came up woefully short. The new 21^st Century model will be an updated one relevant for a globalized, digitalized world.

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The Islamic State has already shown how this can be done. It used new leadership techniques, narratives and technology to reinvent jihad. Like the Islamic State, pan-Arabism also seeks to transform society and establish a new transnational Arab identity. Both offer a romantic notion of the future that elicits an emotional rather than a rational response from the people. The Islamic State envisions a world based on a perverse interpretation of Islam that is brutally spartan and exclusionary. Pan-Arabism has the potential to offer a bottom-up, big tent ideology, which could easily absorb other already existing groups.

The Islamic State used the malaise in Arab and Western societies to boost its appeal and used savage violence as theater to achieve its grisly goals. In contrast, pan-Arabism holds out the promise of positive change and economic benefits. Its appeal lies primarily in the notion of a pan-Arab identity and Arab unity which Arab intellectuals and elites have always found attractive. At its core is the belief in an Arab “super culture” extending across the region from North Africa to the Gulf, albeit with many variances under that umbrella.

One Nation That Cares About Palestine

Pan-Arabism promises to put Palestine at the top of the agenda again. Public opinion surveys have consistently shown that Palestine remains an important issue among ordinary people in the Arab world, even in countries which signed the Abraham Accords with Israel. 

Palestine and Israel: A Bloody Saga

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The 2019-2020 Arab Opinion Index, a public opinion survey across the Arab world conducted by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in Doha, Qatar found that 88% of all Arabs polled opposed recognition of Israel. Significantly, 81% of respondents supported the idea that the many and varied Arab peoples constitute a single nation. Only 16% agreed with the statement that “the Arab peoples are distinct nations, tied together by only tenuous bonds.”

Beyond the romantic vision of Arab unity, pan-Arabism is remarkably non-ideological about how society should be organized, leaving the door open for other ideas and inputs. This relative pragmatism gives pan-Arabism a protean quality that enables it to be many things to many people. Crucially, it makes pan-Arabism an ideology most opposition groups can rally around, fromintelligentsia and artists to jihadis and the Muslim Brotherhood. This gives the ideology its political potency.

In the 1960s, Arab leaders publicly espoused pan-Arabism because they thought it would help them retain power. In reality, they only paid lip-service to pan-Arabism because adopting it would have put their own positions at risk. Today, Arab leaders still pay pan-Arabism lip service but, at the same time, they invest heavily to counter its appeal.  Leaders use their own narratives as well as  top-down, state-sponsored, hard-edged nationalism to consolidate power as seen recently at events like Saudi Foundation Day, UAE Commemoration Day and Sisi’s pharaonic shenanigans.

During the Arab Spring, people protesting did not demand the boundaries that divided the Arab states to dissolve. In retrospect, it now appears to have been a mistake. Since then, it has become clear that the Arab dictators and the Israeli Occupation of Palestine are interlinked. It is almost impossible to tackle any of them individually without tackling them all simultaneously and collectively. For example, democracy in Egypt was rolled back by Israel and the Gulf countries, and Israeli occupation of Palestine continues with Egyptian support. Meanwhile, Gulf autocrats depend on Egypt’s repression of democracy and political Islam to maintain their own domestic power base, and the Egyptian military dictatorship is fueled by Gulf petrodollars. This is the Gordian knot that defeated the Arab Spring revolutions.  Pan-Arabism has the potential to cut this knot, which the Islamic State failed to do.

[Arab Digest first published this article and is a partner of Fair Observer.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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Unveiled earlier this year, the prominent new mural inside Riyadh’s Al-Yamamah Palace — the seat of the Saudi Royal Court — is worthy of comment.  It depicts King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al-Saud in the center, the omnipotent Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman Al-Saud (MBS) is on his right, the far less prominent Prince Turki bin Salman Al-Saud on his left.

Within Saudi Arabia, the mural has stoked a debate over the most probable line of succession in the event of the 86-year-old king dying.  Notably, suggestions have emerged that a future “King MBS” might be willing (or might have been asked by his parents) to appoint Turki as his heir apparent.  On paper, such a scenario isn’t particularly implausible, nor even controversial. MBS’s own sons are too young for such a role. After MBS, Turki is the eldest of the sons of Fahda bint Falah Al-Hathleen, King Salman’s notable third wife.

Money, not succession, is the point

In some respects, however, the rumor mill might be missing the main point.  After all, ‘Riyadhology’-style guessing who is the crown prince seems futile. An increasingly sultanistic MBS could delay the anointment of his successor. Instead, MBS could just play the waiting game until he is strong enough to make one of his own sons the crown prince.  In doing so, he will be taking another leaf out of Abu Dhabi’s Muhammad bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, (MBZ)’s book, where everyone in the innermost sanctum is patiently waiting until MBZ anoints his favored son Khalid as his successor, seeing off any of his uncles.

The mural is perhaps better understood as another layer of evidence indicating that it is actually Turki, rather than any of Fahda’s ostensibly higher profile sons, who has emerged as MBS’s right-hand man. Fahda’s third eldest son, Khalid bin Salman Al-Saud, is deputy minister for defense after serving as ambassador to the US. Her fourth eldest, Bandar bin Salman Al-Saud, is commander of the Royal Bodyguard and is responsible for the personal security of both King Salman and MBS. Unlike his brothers, Turki seems to have quietly assumed control over the family’s private fortunes. He is also being discreetly positioned as one of the kingdom’s most important interlocutors with foreign investors.

Notably, Turki is understood to have already taken over the management of King Salman’s personal real estate portfolio. He served as the guarantor of and is associated with several entities owning King Salman’s various overseas properties.  He also served a short stint as chair of the Saudi Research and Media Group before MBS plucked him out to take the helm of the Al-Tharawat, the personal treasures of the family, in 2015.

Turki’s financial dealings

Though founded in 2008, Al-Tharawat assumed importance in January 2016 as part of MBS’s post-oil diversification masterplan. This masterplan is known as the National Transformation Programme (NTP) and was part of the renowned Saudi Vision 2030.  Significantly, the NTP has focused heavily on supporting private sector growth in strategic areas. The NTP’s goal is to boost the share of the private sector in the GDP from 40 to 65%.

In this context, Turki’s Al-Tharawat had begun to expand rapidly. It is increasingly referred to in Saudi Arabia as a sharikat takatul, a “conglomerate corporation,” and was initially compared to some of the biggest Gulf merchant family-owned companies in Dubai and Bahrain, including the Al-Futtaim Group, the Al-Ghurair Group and the Kanoo Group.  Al-Tharawat has invested in a number of domestic real estate, construction, agricultural, medical and IT projects. It has also been linked to a series of contentious Saudi air industry investments.

Back in 2014, Al-Tharawat had already acquired a majority stake in a small Dubai-based bank. Turki took over as chairman of this bank, which then went on to serve as one of two placement agents for a new shariah-compliant aircraft leasing fund.  In turn, this fund had solicited a $100 million investment from Airbus. The fund was then supposed to purchase 50 Airbus aircraft and then lease them to Saudi Arabia’s national carrier, Saudia. These aircraft formed a third of Saudia’s fleet.

The signing ceremony was held in London where Turki formally announced the fund’s launch. In June 2015, MBS stated at the Paris Air Show that the leasing deal had been finalized, claiming he himself had been its “mastermind.” Significantly, the arrangement soon generated opprobrium, including a rare implicit criticism of the ascendant MBS. 

The financial dealings for Turki and Al-Tharawat are wide-ranging and intricate. Comparing them to the merchant family-owned conglomerates is misleading. Therefore, astute observers, both inside and outside Saudi Arabia, have instead begun likening Al-Tharawat to Bahrain’s Premier Group, which is owned by Bahrain’s Royal Court and is understood to manage King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa’s private domestic and international investments. They also draw comparisons with Abu Dhabi’s Royal Group, which under Tahnun bin Zayed Al-Nahyan’s leadership is seen by some as representing the private business interests of MBZ and his other full brothers. 

The activities of Al-Tharawat clearly reveal that Turki has emerged as his family’s money man and is second only in power to MBS.

[Arab Digest first published this article and is a partner of Fair Observer.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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The Tragic Tales of the Father and the Son

London-based alqst.org this week published a detailed account of the arrest and disappearance of the son of a prominent conservative cleric, who himself was arrested in 2016 and subsequently disappeared.

The organization had this to say: 

“ALQST has learned of the arrest on 14 August 2021 of Abdulwahhab al-Dowaish, son of the preacher Sulaiman al-Dowaish who has been forcibly disappeared since 2016. Abdulwahhab, who was arrested previously in June 2017, had received a phone call from the Saudi authorities asking him to go to the Naif College for National  Security in Riyadh, supposedly to have the electronic tag removed from his ankle. However, as soon as he arrived he was informed that he had to spend the remainder of his sentence, amounting to eight months, in prison.”

Abdulwahhab al-Dowaish was originally arrested in 2017 after an argument with an official at the Interior Ministry to whom he had gone to seek the release of his father. In the course of the argument Abdulwahhab told the official: “We love our father dearly; either release him or put us in prison with him.” The following day, a number of civilian cars surrounded Sulaiman al-Dowaish’s family home, where all his children lived. Abdulwahhab was then arrested and forcibly disappeared for three months, after which his family were able to visit him in prison and saw he had clearly been tortured. A source told ALQST that Abdulwahhab was tortured and forced under duress to make confessions, and because he was in such poor physical condition he was moved to the prison hospital for treatment before being returned once again to the main prison.

Abdulwahhab was subsequently put on trial on charges including support for Islamic State (IS) and holding extremist ideas, although the Public Prosecution failed to produce any evidence for this. He was released before his trial began in March 2018, and was sentenced in September 2020 by the Specialised Criminal Court, Saudi Arabia’s terrorism court, to three and a half years in prison with eighteen months suspension, to be followed by a travel ban of similar duration.”

ALQST notes it still does not know where Abdulwahhab is currently being held.

The World This Week: Something is Rotten in Saudi Arabia

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Abdulwahhab’s father was allegedly brought before MBS in chains and beaten by the crown prince. The cleric was a staunch supporter of the ruling family but fell spectacularly out of favor in 2016 after he published a series of tweets. Ramzi Kaiss writing for the Washington-based human rights organization Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) describes what happened to Sulaiman al-Dowaish in detail:

“In the tweets that apparently provoked his abduction, Dowaish wrote about the dangers of individuals providing “their spoiled sons” with “excessive powers and responsibilities without accountability and oversight.” It was, perhaps, a not-so-subtle reference to King Salman and his son, MBS, who at the time was amassing newfound political power after being appointed by his father, a year earlier, as the minister of defense and deputy crown prince. By 2017, MBS was crown prince.

After being detained in Mecca, Dowaish disappeared. According to an eyewitness, he was soon flown to Riyadh, where he was taken, handcuffed and chained, to the office of MBS himself. According to MENA Rights Group’s sources, Mohammed bin Salman forced Dowaish onto his knees and began to personally assault him—punching him in the chest and throat, and berating him about his tweets. Dowaish, bleeding excessively from his mouth, lost consciousness.

Dowaish was then kept in an unofficial detention facility located in the basement of a royal palace in Riyadh. According to ALQST’s sources, the basement of this palace had been used to imprison and torture high-ranking Saudi officials and rival members of the royal family, by MBS’s own entourage. Maher al-Mutreb and Saud al-Qahtani, two members of the notorious “Tiger Squad” hit team responsible for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and other Saudi dissidents, were in charge of running the secret prison and personally oversaw the torture of Dowaish.”

The Spoiled Son with a Taste for Blood

ALQST, while continuing to demand answers on the fate of Sulaiman, has called on the Saudi authorities to release his son immediately and unconditionally and drop all charges against him.

But as with other cases, MBS and the supine judicial system that answers to him will pay no heed to the call, particularly as Western governments themselves have chosen to largely ignore his multiple abuses, the most widely publicized of which was to order the killing of Jamal Khashoggi.

Although the Biden administration claims that the president raised the Khashoggi case and other human rights violations with the crown prince, human rights activists have argued that all that Biden achieved with his meeting with MBS was to further embolden the crown prince.

Indeed a Saudi doctoral student studying at Leeds University had a previous sentence of three years dramatically increased.  Her crime was posting comments critical of the regime on a website on the internet. Salma al-Shehab had returned to the kingdom on a holiday when she was arrested. On 9 August, the appeals court sentenced the 34-year-old mother of two young children to 34 years in prison. As if this was not enough, the court ordered that, after her release, this lady would face a 34-year travel ban.

On August 15, numbers revealed that executions in the first six months of 2022 hit 120. A record 81 were executed in a single day. This is the largest number in the history of the kingdom. That number is greater than the total number of executions of the last two years, making a mockery of Saudi promises to limit executions. It raises questions about what exactly did Biden’s meeting with MBS actually achieve.

[Arab Digest first published this article and is a partner of Fair Observer.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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This aggressive response of MBS is unprecedented in US-Saudi relations. It demonstrates that MBS has consolidated his power within the kingdom. It also reveals how high oil prices have given MBS much economic clout. He now clearly believes that Saudi Arabia doesn’t need the US in the same way his predecessors did.  If anything the shoe is on the other foot. Biden is heading into midterms that his party is likely to lose heavily because of surging inflation driven by high energy costs. The American president needs MBS to pump more oil.

Rising Oil Prices Boost Saudi Economy

The latest economic forecasts have put more wind in MBS’s already expansive sails. London-based Capital Economics estimated that Saudi Arabia’s GDP might have grown by 10% in the first half of 2022 thanks to high oil prices. In their words:

“The oil sector has sustained its strong momentum. Production rose from 10.36mn bpd in April to 10.42mn bpd in May, translating into growth of 22.9% y/y….  Looking ahead, the prospects for the oil sector look very bright. The decision by OPEC+ to raise its output quotas by 50% in July and August will provide an additional boost to Saudi production. And if, as we expect, OPEC+ removes the shackles of quotas beyond September, Saudi Arabia is one of the few members that will be able to capitalise and we think that output will reach a record high by late-2023.

Capital Economics says the economy, and particularly the private sector, will be further boosted by the loosening of fiscal policies now underway and the distinct possibility of a VAT cut.  The VAT tax rate was tripled in 2020 to 15%. This increase was to shore up government finances under strain because of the then low oil prices.

Biden and MBS hit an impasse on the issue of human rights. That is immaterial. In truth, human rights was not a priority for the US president. What is significant is that Biden and BMS issued a  shared communique on the economic quagmire in which Lebanon is currently stuck.

As reported by L’Orient Today:

In a joint statement, the two men “noted the importance of forming a government and implementing structural and global reforms in politics and economy so that Lebanon can overcome its crisis and not constitute a launchpad for terrorists, drug trafficking and criminal activities which threaten its stability (and) the region’s security.”

Using the King Salman Relief Center the kingdom funneled $36 million in humanitarian aid to Lebanon in March. That was followed in April by the full restoration of diplomatic relations that had ruptured over critical comments by Lebanese politicians over the Yemen war.

The Lebanese Economic Crisis

Since 2019, Lebanon has endured a complex economic and financial crisis, deepened by political deadlock, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the Beirut Port explosions in August 2020 and now the global food and fuel crisis. As the World Bank has highlighted, the ongoing political paralysis is destroying “key pillars of Lebanon’s post-civil war political economy.”  It cites the collapse of most basic public services and the flight of young Lebanese from a failed country in a colossal brain drain.  Both these phenomena will inflict further damage going forward. “Meanwhile,” the report acidly notes: “the poor and the middle class, who were never well served under this model in the first place, are carrying the main burden of the crisis.”

The comic Keystone Cops quality of the current situation emerged yet again on Tuesday in a farcical judicial matter. Ghada Aoun is the presiding judge in a case against Riad Salameh, the governor of Lebanon’s central bank Banque de Liban (BDL). Aoun attempted to haul BDL’s big boss Salameh in front of court. Aoun first sent state security officers to storm Salameh’s residence in El Metn, a posh neighborhood in Rabieh, an upscale northern suburb of Beirut. When the officers did not find the governor at home, Aoun packed them off to the BDL offices in central Beirut. Again, they did not find Salameh.

The Aoun gambit did accomplish a couple of things. First, it rebuked the current caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati who called the incident a “raid for show.” Second, it led to a three-day strike by outraged BDL employees. The head of the BDL union declared: “We refuse to be treated with militia-like methods. We are not defending Riad Salameh but rather this institution, and these methods are unacceptable to us.”

The bank employees join several other strikers, among them university lecturers and public sector employees. In a broken country, gallows humor is now the order of the day. L’Orient Today summed up the current situation brilliantly:

“Do you need an “Ikhraj Eid” (extract of civil registry)? Sorry, it’s not possible. Do you need a passport? Sorry, it’s not possible. The public sector is collapsing as employees continue in their fifth week of an open-ended strike. Everyone is striking… The problem is that they are still being paid in lira. It is the government’s cowardly strategy of reducing the sector’s headcount through attrition. Expenses will definitely drop, but so will revenues. Where are the thinking heads? And they say they want to approve the 2022 budget! With what numbers? More made up ones.”

Lebanon is hurtling to disaster and time is running out.

[Arab Digest first published this article and is a partner of Fair Observer.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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There was great interest in, and much speculation about, the outcome of US President Joe Biden’s July visit to Saudi Arabia. Once it moved from “will he, won’t he” to “yes, he will,” it gave rise to a cottage industry of op-eds, analyses, and roundtables. There was much talk about Biden and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) making up with the US, Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords. Aramco increasing oil production, Israeli security gaining primacy and the US leading the creation of a so-called Middle East Defense Alliance, including the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and Israel—and, crucially, what the US and Saudi “asks” of each other might be. 

In the end, the meeting’s outcome was modest, but critical—it re-established a direct line between the White House and the Saudi leadership (read MBS). This was most likely the optimum result for this administration—not a relationship overhaul or reset, but a recognition that functionality must win out and thus communication at the top was restored.

The US-Saudi Relationship Was Never in Danger

Contrary to public perception, the fundamental relationship was never actually in peril.  Granted, certain elements came under pressure, especially due to respective domestic political considerations, and personal tensions over difficult issues such as human rights, press freedoms, the Yemen conflict and the Khashoggi murder that played out on the international stage.

As is the case for all new incumbents, Biden’s initial focus was to set himself apart—by some distance—from his predecessor, as much for his international as for his home audience. His was a particular mission to return the US to the more stable and reliable foreign policy upon which the world had come to depend. However, in the Middle East, his challenge was different. The leadership in Saudi Arabia had fully embraced former president Trump, while in the West, political watchers had waited in vain for the crown prince’s brash style to be tamed by the weight of office. But MBS was never socialized by his position of power, leaving the incoming Biden administration to shift gears and, in the eyes of Democrats, course-correct to a more traditional approach towards the Kingdom.

Biden’s assertive attitude towards Riyadh—from campaign through to entering the Oval Office—was more to address Democrat concern over Trump’s turning a blind eye towards behavior considered morally questionable by the US political left than it was to chastise the Gulf state. His pressing priority was to show moral strength to his party, and he made a series of decisions that set him on a collision course with MBS. His early announcement that he would speak only to King Salman, citing protocol, was a clear snub to MBS. Biden intended to deliver a message: we are going to play by the rules, and we expect you to do so too. In February 2021, the White House did two things. First, it released the CIA report on the Istanbul murder of Jamal Khashoggi. The report found that MBS had personally ordered the assassination of the Saudi journalist Adnan Khashoggi. Second, the White House halted US support for offensive operations in Yemen and suspended sales of specific weapons to Saudi Arabia.

MBS Plays Hardball

In response, MBS took his own hard line, which was intended to show both the Saudi population and international leaders that Riyadh’s policies will not be determined, or unduly influenced, by the US. He was striking out and his sentiment was widely shared by many Saudis and others in the Gulf. MBS was the personification of the feeling that Washington no longer calls the shots in the Middle East. With the advantage of youth, MBS basically shrugged his shoulders at Biden and said “whatever” as evidenced in his interview with The Atlantic in March.

The US calculus towards Saudi Arabia changed when Russia invaded Ukraine. The US and its European allies sought to respond to Russian aggression even as oil prices spiraled to around $140 per barrel. Rising oil prices left Biden with little choice other than to reach out directly to MBS after attempts to do so by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan failed. Sullivan was unable to persuade the Saudi leadership to increase production and offset crippling price hikes. 

MBS’s’ well-publicized refusal to take Biden’s “oil call” in March was something of a pinnacle moment. It not only inflamed personal animosity between Biden and MBS, but it also impressed upon both of them the necessity to dial things down and work together for the sake of their mutual national interests. Buoyed by a combination of high oil prices and the fact that he was feted by French President Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, MBS must have felt vindicated that Biden wanted to visit. Global events had forced another gear change in the White House: Biden succumbed to realpolitik and met MBS in Riyadh, fist bump and all.

Convergent Interests

But underneath the public spat and the personal tensions, the multifaceted dimensions of bilateral ties—defense, trade, finance and investment—continued at pace, and in both directions. The trade volume between the two countries reached close to $25bn in 2021, a 22% increase from 2020. There was a significant rise in non-oil exports from the Kingdom to the US. Now, Biden is slowly thawing on defense sales with whispers that restrictions may be reconsidered in the near future. Some might point to the need for more oil on the market to combat high gasoline prices as a driving force, while others note a broader strategy to push Arab-Israeli security cooperation to counter Iran, particularly now that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) seems to be dead. Earlier this year, the US allowed the sale of Patriot missiles and anti-ballistic defense systems to Riyadh following Houthi attacks against the Kingdom. If the shaky, but still holding, recently extended truce in Yemen becomes a permanent ceasefire, the scope of US weapons sales to Saudi Arabia may broaden yet again.

While the Biden-MBS meeting drew most media attention, and many analysts, including your authors, rolled their eyes at the suggestion of yet another so-called Arab NATO project, the Jeddah visit did lay down some tracks towards developing a multilateral regional security framework. Instead of focusing on the harder security elements such as air and missile defense, the US and Saudi Arabia will seek to bring onboard the members of the ‘Negev 9’ by engaging with them at different times, paces and spaces on softer security issues in a bid to work towards greater multilateral security integration, but with no precise end date in mind.

By doing so, the Biden administration is continuing a long-held tradition of trying to develop a regional security architecture that incorporates Israel—following the success of the Abraham Accords—and advances Israel’s long trek to normalization of ties with Arab states. If successful, it would, on the one hand, allow the US to remain central to regional security and, on the other, reduce its level of commitment, as regional partners increasingly share the burden.

There is no question that the US would like to spend less time and energy on helping manage regional affairs, particularly given its focus on China. Its pursuit of a new regional security architecture bringing together ‘like-minded’ states to work collaboratively is a long-term project that may benefit from the catalyst of technological leapfrogging that could spur quicker and more comprehensive cooperation. But there can be no doubt that its success will only be realized if Washington shows unwavering commitment and constantly reassures regional leaders that they are valued and are never to be forgotten. Fist bumping with MBS may have stuck in Biden’s craw, but he knew that it was a necessary step to not only to open up critical communications between the White House and the Saudi leadership, but also to serve as a milestone in galvanizing regional partners into a security framework to meet the challenge of Iran in a post-JCPOA era.

[Arab Digest first published this article and is a partner of Fair Observer.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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The ICG report details the apparent ease with which small units of ISIS fighters, in groups of four or five, conduct raids on Syrian troops and SDF forces, conduct assassinations and mete out other forms of punishment on those deemed to have “collaborated” with any enemy. The report also details how ISIS runs lucrative smuggling and extortion rackets. These provide the funds to recruit and pay fighters and to equip them with weapons.

Of Prisons and Prisoners

The report points out the vulnerability of the 27 prisons holding ISIS fighters scattered throughout the northeast of the country as well as the holding camps for women and children, the most notorious of which is al-Hol. There, militant hardline women control much of the camp. The SDF, already stretched, is charged with policing and holding the prisons, the holding camps as well as IDP camps. “Our ticking time bomb” is how a senior SDF commander, citing a lack of personnel and resources, describes al-Hol where 15 murders were committed in the first three months of this year.

The SDF’s vulnerability was on full display in January when ISIS launched a full-scale attack on Ghowayran Prison in Hasakah:

“The attack showcased the shortcomings of existing security mechanisms. A prison holding thousands of ISIS fighters was guarded by members of unarmed self-defence units who had received minimal training before being deployed.  The inmates quickly overran this under-trained and under-equipped force.”

It took nearly two weeks to bring the attack to an end and it was only achieved with the aid of US and British airstrikes and special forces on the ground. The ICG estimates that 200 SDF soldiers died in the fighting along with hundreds of ISIS fighters and inmates. Hundreds more escaped.

Guerrilla Tactics

That sort of full frontal assault as on Ghowayran Prison has been something of an anomaly. ISIS tactics in Syria by and large are classic guerrilla engagements of the hit and run variety: attacks on checkpoints and convoys by small mobile cells operating independently of a central command.

ISIS conducted an ambush on a bus of Syrian army soldiers in Jabal Bishri, Raqqa, on June 20, killing at least 13 soldiers. The insurgency flourishes in a climate of suspicion, resentment and fear that the Arab population holds for the Kurdish-dominated SDF. Add to that the extreme climate conditions that have significantly damaged harvests as drought conditions and high temperatures prevail and the elements for constant insurgency are all in place.

Details of the severity of the agricultural crisis are available in a report from the Turkish-based Operations & Policy Center which notes:

“Since the latter months of 2020, Syria has yet again fallen into a severe drought. This new drought is occurring in a country whose agricultural capacity has already been decimated by decades of  agricultural and water misgovernance, as well as an 11-year war, making it less capable of coping with a drought than at any point in its modern history.”

In such dire conditions, ISIS recruits new fighters easily, especially as its well-organized smuggling infrastructure provides the cash to lure desperate young men to become ISIS foot soldiers.

The ICG sheds light on a sophisticated and well-oiled machine that includes the bribing of elements both in the regime and the SDF:

“The north east has become a pillar of ISIS finances. The SDF-held territory is rich in natural resources, including oil and gas, and has longstanding economic links to other parts of Syria, as well as Iraq. ISIS relies on three primary funding sources: racketeering, taxation and smuggling. With this money ISIS buys weapons and supplies, offers stipends to its members’ families, bribes SDF guards to secure detainees’ release, recruits new fighters and pays the occasional hit man.”

The report continues:

“In many ways, ISIS operates like a mafia, preying on governing institutions and businesses through extortion and blackmail. In some cases, it has recruited local council employees to collect protection money from their colleagues. It also shakes down traders, artisanal oil refinery owners, bakers and smugglers. It is unclear how ISIS determines the amount of money to demand from each target, but SDF officials claim that oil investors and refinery owners pay thousands of dollars per month to avoid ISIS attacks on their businesses.”

The ICF report, though it paints a bleak picture, does not foresee the restoration of a caliphate. Rather it sees an ongoing insurgency, one that harasses and destabilizes, all the while building on the economic miseries that the still-unresolved Syrian civil war  and the drought have unleashed. Integral to any strategy to finally see off ISIS is cooperation between the many factions, both internal and external, that bedevil the conflict. With such cooperation seeming more a pipedream than reality, the ISIS insurgency will remain a constant threat within Syria, neighbouring Iraq and well beyond as it inspires the next generation of jihadist terrorists.

[Arab Digest first published this article and is a partner of Fair Observer.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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The case, which was first exposed by Private Eye in 2016, relates to a UK government deal to provide communications services to the Saudi Arabian National Guard (SANG), which were delivered by a now defunct unit of Airbus called GPT Special Project Management. The Serious Fraud Office has prosecuted  the case. It claims GPT paid other companies, which were then used to bribe senior Saudi officials, including Prince Miteb bin Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, former head of SANG, in order to secure the contracts.

Opening the defense case at Southwark Crown Court, Barrister Ian Winter QC described the structure of the government-to-government deal, which dates back to the late 1970s, as a “fiddle” that enabled members of the Saudi royal family and the British government to “deny having any knowledge of [the payments] at all”. Winter went on to say: “This indictment does not begin to plumb the depths of what the UK government has been involved in since the late 1970s.”  The case promises not only to cast new light on the depths of UK-Saudi relations, but also to overshadow a much more recent Saudi deal with Airbus struck by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) for the exclusive benefit of himself and his line of the family.

MBS’s Murky Business Empire

Little public information is available about how the Salman clan runs its business empire. MBS is believed to oversee it personally and his full brother Turki and mother Fahda bint Falah bin Sultan al-Hithlayn are also involved. Fahda, who is never seen in public, was restored to Saudi society without comment in 2018 after being locked up by MBS for two years. Turki’s main role is to introduce Western companies to the crown prince and he deliberately keeps in the background.

Outside Saudi Arabia, the family controls three Luxembourg-registered companies—Safason Corporation, Valburton Investments S.A. and Folabin—about which very little public information is available. Inside Saudi Arabia, their principal business vehicle is Tharawat Holding Company of which Turki bin Salman is the chairman.

Tharawat Holding Company has business interests inside Saudi Arabia in diverse sectors including construction, real estate, health, education, sports development, food and beverage, aquaculture, telecommunications and natural resources management. It is also suspected of having made a fortune out of defense contracts linked to the Yemen war. Before he was kidnapped and returned to Saudi Arabia against his will, a dissident Saudi prince told Arab Digest that, when the war started, Tharawat diversified its foreign partnerships into military materiel and the Salman clan enriched itself immensely via inflated arms contracts arranged by Turki.

“[Salman’s branch] are behind things inside the country and the Saudi public knows about it” said the prince. “MBS operates his business by bringing his special people and he is in control of the Royal Court. The younger brothers are making money, especially Prince Turki bin Salman. He has no official position—just a businessman —but MBS gives his brother some deals. Turki works for them.”

In September 2015, an anonymous grandson of Ibn Saud published a letter calling for the downfall of the Saudi king in which he warned that large sums of money are being embezzled by the inner circle of the royal family. The letter stated that $160 billion (SAR 600 billion) was taken by the leadership with a further $100 billion (SAR 375 billion) allegedly going directly to MBS and his brothers, Turki, Khaled, Nayif, Bandar, and Rakan.

Power and Wealth to MBS, His Sons and Brothers

The dissident prince also said Turki told him that MBS intends to change the current system of succession in the Saudi Kingdom to one based on primogeniture so that MBS’s own son will inherit the throne after him. “Turki told me we will be like Bahrain and Jordan where MBS will be king and then his son will be his successor’” said the prince.

“When MBS becomes king, he wants to put one of his children as crown prince, he wants it in his family, Salman’s family, so he will appoint his son as crown prince although he is only a little baby. He has one son called Salman. MBS wants to put him on the crown in the same way as the monarchies of Morocco, Bahrain, Jordan, or England do, to keep the throne for his blood. Either MBS will put his son directly as crown prince or he will first appoint one of his brothers and then his son.”

One business deal the Salman clan are known to have been involved in is arranging the financing for a new fleet of Airbus planes for Saudi Arabian Airlines, the flagship carrier of Saudi Arabia. In 2018 The Wall Street Journal published an investigation into how the clan uses businesses connected to the government to make their fortunes. The story explains in detail how, when MBS came to power, he helped re-engineer the original plan.

As per the original plan, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) would have purchased 50 new planes directly from Airbus for Saudi Arabian Airlines. MBS has dumped that deal for a far more complex deal involving a newly established company called International Airfinance Corp (IAFC), which manages an Islamic finance fund called ALIF and is part-owned by an Islamic bank based in the Dubai International Financial Centre called Quantum Investment Bank in which Tharawat acquired a 54% stake. MBS’s brother Turki is the chairman of this bank.

Despite concerns raised about the deal—Saudi Arabian Airlines did not solicit bids from any other companies—and the fact that the Serious Fraud Office in London was at that time already investigating an Airbus subsidiary for corruption involving the Saudis, Airbus agreed to invest $100 million in ALIF on the condition that the fund would buy only Airbus planes. On June 23, 2014, Airbus and IAFC held a “signing ceremony” in London to announce the new fund. The IAFC press release tells us Turki hosted this ceremony.

In 2015, after King Abdullah died, the plan changed yet again into an even more convoluted chain of transactions. Instead of being sold directly to the Saudi government, the jets would now be sold to ALIF, which would in turn rent them to the state-owned Saudi Arabian Airlines, which has subsequently been rebranded as Saudia. Note that this convoluted deal helps Tharawat ending up as a beneficiary. As one government official put it, “at the end it went to Tharawat, who got others to finance it, and made huge profits without risking any of their money.”

On August 5, 2015, the anonymous opposition Saudi Twitter account Mujtahidd tweeted that the list price for 30 A320 and 20 A330-300 Airbus planes was $8 billion (SAR30 billion), but the amount budgeted was $12 billion (SAR 45 billion). The budgeted price is 50% more than the listed price, meaning $4 billion could be going into the pockets of MBS, Turki and their brothers. The original tweet is no longer available as Mujtahidd was hacked a month later and all its tweets were erased. Mujtahidd also wrote that MBS financed the deal with a Saudi government guarantee, on condition that Saudi Arabian Airlines paid Tharawat 150% of the agreed price.

The deal was finalized by MBS during a 2015 visit to France and not long after, at a gathering in a Saudi palace, he took credit for it. MBS claimed that the transaction demonstrated his success in balancing the Saudi state’s financial interests with his family’s interests. MBS reportedly said, “I am the mastermind behind this deal.” Depending on what happens next with the Serious Fraud Office’s case now unfolding in Southwark Crown Court, MBS’s cherished deal could yet come unstuck.

[Arab Digest first published this article and is a partner of Fair Observer.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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