In this Explainer, I will focus on the ambitious Mohammed Bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. MbS, as he is usually referred to, has, in a very short time, come to dominate the tangled political landscape of West Asia (I prefer this term to the usual Middle East).
An aside on the name:
In Saudi society (and generally in the Arabian Peninsula), a man’s name
includes the name of his father (pretty much like in large parts of India). Bin
means ‘son of’; so, Mohammed bin Salman means son of Salman.
Also, in this
article you would find ‘Mohammed’ spelt in two different ways; I have taken the
Saudi government accepted spellings of the names of the leaders.
Who is Mohammed bin Salman?
Virtually unknown
in the corridors of power before his meteoric rise, MbS was appointed the Crown
Prince in June 2017. Soon after his father became the King, MbS was appointed the
Deputy Crown Prince; his cousin and the son of King Salman’s brother Mohammad
bin Nayef, was forcibly relieved of his office by MbS.
Today he is also
the kingdom’s Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Defence, Chairman of the
Council for Economic and Development Affairs, and Chairman of the Council of
Political and Security Affairs.
MbS is the most
powerful person in today’s Saudi Arabia. The King, his father, trusts him
blindly and has stood by him even as the calls for the Crown Prince’s removal
for his involvement in the botched Yemen War and the Jamal Khashoggi murder
saga grow louder.
MbS is seen as an
ardent reformer by his supporters, while his detractors describe him as
megalomaniacal and impetuous. His supporters point to the several reforms he
has ushered in the deeply conservative country: lifting the ban on women
drivers, allowing cinemas and music concerts, and introducing a spate of
economic reforms.
MbS’ detractors,
and there are many, cite his campaign in Yemen and the ill-planned embargo
against Qatar as examples of his whimsical behaviour.
They also describe
him as power-hungry who cannot tolerate dissent; the jailing of thousands of
political dissidents, including women activists is a case in point. It is
interesting to know here that the women activists were jailed for demanding
driving rights for women. Ironically, MbS lifted the ban on women drivers and
yet the women activists were jailed for calling for the same reform! Now, you
may find this behaviour difficult to decipher. Well, it is easy if you
understand the purport of MbS’ game plan: you cannot demand rights and get
them; you will get rights ONLY if the King or the Crown Prince decide to give
you rights – in other words, so it is the top-down approach that’s at work
here.
Another example is
his treatment of the Prime Minister of Lebanon, Saad Hariri. When Hariri arrived
in the Kingdom to meet King Salman, he was bundled to an unknown location; there
was a complete blackout of the news concerning Hariri, a leader of a sovereign
nation. One week later, Hariri was forced to tender his resignation from the
prime minister’s post of his country from the soil of a foreign nation.
A Luxury Prison
The incident that shook the ground
beneath the feet of elite Saudis took place in November 2017. Around 200
prominent Saudis, including the former Crown Prince Muhammad bin Nayef and Bakr
bin Laden, the head of Saudi Binladin Group (a construction giant), were
rounded up and detained for several months at the Ritz-Carlton Palace Hotel on the orders of MbS. The entire
operation was described as a campaign against corruption and embezzlement; the
detained were accused of enriching themselves at the cost of the Saudi State.
It is believed that a few of those detained were tortured and forced into
giving up their wealth. Bakr bin Laden and his two brothers were forced to
transfer their 36 per cent shareholding in Saudi Binladin Group to a
state-controlled company, overseen by MbS.
The Jamal Khashoggi Saga
Jamal Khashoggi was a
Saudi Arabian journalist and an insider in the Saudi royal court. He fled to
the U.S after running afoul of the current royal administration in Saudi Arabia.
A vociferous critic of the Saudi Arabian royal house, especially the Crown
Prince Mohammad bin Salman, he was a columnist for the Washington Post
newspaper and head of an Arab news channel. MbS had accused Khashoggi of
working with the Kingdom’s rivals like Iran and Qatar.
On 2 October
2018, he visited the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul to collect documents
pertaining to the dissolution of his marriage to a Saudi Arabian woman; the
documents were necessary for him to get married to his Turkish fiancée. He was
murdered inside the consulate by Saudi Arabian intelligence officials. Till
date, no trace of his body has been found.
The murder of
Jamal Khashoggi has since thrown West Asia into turmoil. The Khashoggi saga has
embroiled Saudi Arabia and Turkey in a war of words, with the U.S. squeezed
between its two important allies. The following are the major players in the
Khashoggi saga: Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United States, Iran, Qatar, and the
Muslim Brotherhood.
Erdogan's Wicked Glee
Turkey directly
implicated Saudi Arabia of carrying out the murder on its soil, even pointing a
finger at MbS for his involvement. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed
the possession of unimpeachable evidence of the involvement of the Saudi Crown
Prince, suggesting that the order for the murder “came from the highest
authorities in the Saudi administration”.
Why did the Turkish President get so
worked up about the murder of a Saudi dissident? The answer to this seemingly
distasteful question lies in the ‘great power’ ambitions of the two countries.
We know that Saudi
Arabia is the de facto leader of the Muslim World; however, Turkey, under Erdogan,
wants to become the centre of the Muslim World, just like the Ottoman empire
was before its eventual collapse in 1922. Erdogan, an Islamist, has a grand
vision of becoming the voice of the Muslim World, and he has made no effort to
conceal his ambitions.
Erdogan is a
firm supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, an Egyptian extremist Islamist
organization with a wide support base in the Muslim World. The Muslim
Brotherhood is an anti-monarchy, pro-Sharia group. The Muslim Brotherhood came
to power after its newly floated political party won the Egyptian elections in
2012, a development that rang loud alarm bells in the capitals of the
monarchies in the Muslim World.
The
anti-monarchy, pro-Sharia core ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood raised the
hackles of the Saudi monarchy who felt threatened by the hardcore Islamist who
was now the president of Egypt, a neighbouring country. Alarmed by the spectre
of the spread of the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology in Saudi Arabia, the Saudi
Arabia royal house instigated the Egyptian army to oust the Muslim Brotherhood
from power and take over the country. Thus, in July 2013, barely a few months after
coming to power, the Islamist President of Egypt was ousted and jailed on
charges of terrorism.
The Saudi
Arabian involvement in the ousting of the democratically elected government in
Egypt angered Erdogan, a die-hard supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood. The
murder of Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city, came as a blessing
to put the Saudis on the mat. He leaked evidence of the involvement of the Saudi
Crown Prince in the Khashoggi murder case in a calibrated manner; in fact, the
method was so effective that it has been called “death by a thousand leaks”.
Saudi Arabia
botched its response to the Khashoggi murder saga; from firmly denying its
involvement to calling it a rogue intelligence operation without concurrence of
the royal house, the Saudi Arabian government came across as confused and
unprepared for the massive backlash from the international community.
To begin
with, the United States called on the Saudi Arabian royal house to come clean
on its role in the Jamal Khashoggi murder. Since then, the U.S. has spoken in
multiple tongues; this is because the Donald Trump White House stood by MbS,
even while the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the U.S. premier external spy
agency, pointed to the direct involvement of the Crown Prince in the murder of
the journalist. It is well known that there is no love lost between Trump and
the country’s numerous spy and security agencies.
So, why did the U.S. stand
by Mohammed bin Salman? The
most important reason for this is Washington’s Iran policy. The U.S. policy in
West Asia is centred around Iran; Washington has been categorical in stating
that it will do all to stop Iran’s “wave of regional destruction and global
campaign of terror”.
An enemy’s
enemy is a friend. This truism defines the relationship between the U.S. and the
Sunni nations in West Asia. The Sunni Muslim nations, like Saudi Arabia and the
United Arab Emirates, deeply distrust Shia Iran, accusing it of fomenting
terrorism in their nations. So, to counter Iran, the U.S. needs Saudi Arabia,
the region’s most powerful nation and the fulcrum of the Sunni Muslim World. Saudi
Arabia, under MbS, is at the forefront of the anti-Iran brigade; the Saudis see
Iran as an existential threat. In fact, Saudi Arabia even backs Israel (Saudi
Arabia and Israel do not have diplomatic relations, owing to the Palestinian
issue) in the latter’s covert and overt operations against Iran, spread across
the region, especially in Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon.
What about the U.S.’ professed love
for the protection of rights of freedom of expression, right to dissent, and
religious freedom? Well,
in international politics, respect for democracy, human rights, morality, ideology
are matters of convenience; they can be expended at the altar of national
interest.
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