The unmitigated murder of Jamal Kashoggi, a Saudi Arabian high profile journalist turned dissident, seems to have momentarily put the excesses of the kingdom under the radar of international community. If an establishment person can be killed like chicken then only God knows what would happen to ordinary mortals in such a society. Of course reasons abound why Saudi Arabia behaves in a rogue fashion. There is this argument that Saudi Arabia is not a country in the conventional sense of the word. I once heard Professor Fred Halliday of the London School of Economics argued that Saudi Arabia “is not a country” in the true sense of what we know about modern nations. I quite agree with Halliday on reasons why he thinks Saudi Arabia is not a country. So far, the curious methods and practices of Saudi kingdom are a testimony to Halliday’s scholarly views on that tribal enclave. The unconventionality of the kingdom could be seen in the treatment of citizens in terms of mere subjects of absolute monarchy. This could also be seen in the brutal suppression of religious minorities, and the complete absence of fundamental rights in the kingdom. Free press and dissenting views are strange concepts there. The perplexing existential conditions in the kingdom have served as the fertile ground for the global machinations of western imperialism, and in its undying quest for tactics and strategies to dominate Muslim territories.
Once again, the idea of establishing a purely Bedouin Arab kingdom out of the lands of Islam was for the expressed intent of shoring up western imperialist agendas in that strategically important region of the world. To succeed in that plot, two monsters had to be created by western imperialist adventures in the Middle East. These evil monsters are none other than the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Zionist state of Israel, respectively. They are the twin pillars of imperialism that were created in the first part of 20th century. As I said on these pages last year, the Middle East has never known peace since the creation of those pariah States. Ostensibly, the implants have been created for the purpose of geostrategic interests and/or total geopolitical control of the region and the Muslim world. The principalities of Israel and Saudi Arabia are nowadays behaving like loose canons simply because they have the backing of American establishment. Trump America, an entity that is in itself as divided as anything, a nation waiting to implode on its own terms from deeply irreconcilable ideological fissures, has given Benjamin Natanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, carte blanche to destroy achievements recorded over the years in the name of Palestinian-Israel peace talks. This is all in order to justify Trump’s so called deal of the century which ceded Jerusalem to Israel as its future capital. In the midst of it all, Saudi Arabia was given the green light to destroy Yemen with dangerous weapons bought from Europe and America.
Does it surprise anyone that both Saudi Arabia and Israel have in their recklessness shown nothing but contempt and impunity towards international treaties and conventions? The brutal killing of Khashoggi and the manner in which his body was inhumanly mutilated is nothing but pure and undiluted act of a paranoid prince, which in some views is seen as cocaine induced psychosis of an overambitious heir apparent. We are here dealing with a precarious throne, the chances of survival of which the unfolding cataclysm engulfing the region makes very uncertain. Indeed, the civilized world is being forced to come to terms with the reckless action of overzealous character of a Saudi Prince. This boy is highly unschooled in civility and refinement in handling the domestic affairs and foreign relations of the kingdom. The deceptive backing of western powers, those powers that are more or less interested in the fortune of the kingdom, the Prince enjoys at the moment has prompted the current excesses of Saudi Arabia, a kingdom that is obsessed with its overhyped power and influence. Saudi Arabia is nothing but a very violent pre-modern monarchy that has become a burden to itself, its neighbors and the Muslim world as a whole. The body language of Muhammad bin Salman (MBS as he is fondly called by his admirers) is suggestive of one-dimensional megalomaniac, a sick person that is only too eager to mount the throne of his father. This brash character of a prince is too eager to see his father quits the royal stool. In all this, we are merely seeing the tantrums of an over pampered crown prince whose transmogrification into the most powerful figure in the decadent desert kingdom takes nothing less than brazen subversion of the unwritten laws of succession traditions evolved by his forefathers from the third and fourth decades of the 20th century with the discovery of enormous oil wealth in the fiefdom.
MBS is a blatant bunch of self-contradiction, a lost sheep of some sort amongst his princely peers, an untamed beast amongst his friends and foes. He came around at an inauspicious time when the desert kingdom violently seized by his forefathers was mired in its own miscalculations, and the miscalculations of western powers as well: what with the ISIS project gone awry, which in itself is threatening to seal the fate of both the kingdom and the Muslim countries in general. Without weighing his options in a world that is elsewhere operating on international precepts, MBS does things without minding the consequences of his actions. Otherwise, how would he not weigh the implications of the killing of Kashoggi in a foreign country for that matter? Saudi Arabia thinks it can get away with everything, including the murder of people inside and outside its own borders. This daring act was flagrantly committed because nobody questions the wanton killings going on within the Kingdom itself. Saudi Arabia also believes that insofar as it continues enjoying the support of American establishment and Zionist State of Israel it can proceed from there to transgress all boundaries of ethics and decency without qualms.
The kingdom of Saudi Arabia is increasingly being emboldened by the apparent helplessness of the world in this period of uncertainty, especially with transgressive attempts of United State’s to delegitimize the global institutions regulating peace and security of the world. You and I are witnesses to how United Nations and some of its agencies are being put under enormous pressures to toe the line of the unilateral actions of the United States in the pursuit of its geostrategic interests. Otherwise, the world will not remain quite in the face of Israel’s brutal suppression of the legitimate struggle of Palestinians to liberate their occupied territories. The maltreatment of Palestinians is today only paralleled by Saudi Arabia’s inhumanity demonstrated in its imposed war on Yemen. In fact, Yemeni’s are dying in thousands from Cholera and famine as the world looks the other way. The country is on the verge of major catastrophe due to Saudi Arabia’s indiscriminate bombardment of civilian targets, infrastructure, and criminal blockade of humanitarian aid. Even food and medicine that were supposed to come through the only corridor of the port of Al-Hudaydah negotiated by the United Nations have been completely blockaded. The self-appointed custodians of holy cities of Mecca and Medina are now using hunger as a weapon with which to starve innocent Yemenis. Millions of Yemeni children may perish if nothing is done to stop MBS from his mindless desire to control the affairs of the countries of the Arabian Peninsula. It is only now that the gruesome murder of Kashoggi is forcing the mainstream media in the West to come to terms with the unbearable situation in Yemen. Kashoggi’s death is right now the key issue that is projecting the excesses of Saudi Arabia in global media spotlight.
The killing of Kashoggi has exposed Saudi Arabia as a violent society that specializes in subverting the humanist principles of Islam that gives the religion its beauty, which it also effectively replaced with its own Bedouin version, a petrodollar dehumanizing form of Islam. For whatever it is worth, the introduction of cosmetic reforms in the kingdom would not be divorced from the failure of ISIS project to achieve its nefarious goals across the Middle East, and in many other parts of Muslim world. The West eggs on Saudi Arabia to embark upon reforms in order to save it from being gobbled up by the ISIS chickens that are coming home to roost, especially after their decisive defeat in Iraq and Syria. Traditions of succession introduced by the founders of the kingdom have to be bent just to create an MBS phenomenon. In the logic of such a plot, Saudi Arabia needs an energetic leader that would champion some cosmetic reforms. Grumpy old men won’t be able to stand the cataclysm of such reforms in a fast decaying kingdom about to implode. Instead of rejuvenating the kingdom, the so-called reform is however deepening existential crises to the dismay of powerful western interests that conceived them in the first place. Time will tell if the kingdom is going to survive the internal contradictions unleashed by MBS reforms.
