A year after the assassination of Khashoggi .. Why killed him alone?

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Throughout its relatively recent history, the editorial board of Al-Watan, one of the largest and most widely circulated newspapers in Saudi Arabia, affiliated with the reformist wing, has not required the ability to manage files related to Saudi internal affairs, since its inception in 2000, by the Emir of the House of Saud. Influence "Khalid bin Faisal Al Saud", the newspaper did not in any case only to «convey the pulse of the Saudi street and the lifestyle of the Kingdom» as the stated vision of the vision, "Khalid bin Faisal" himself, so the Saudi conditions were required to work in it or even affiliation In traditional writing: Al-Saud's support is almost complete, and reverence for Al-Saud Jamal Khashoggi was not an exception during his three years of work, committed to all the usual red lines, before he later made his mistake tasted by the power of a fist. The clerical class in the Kingdom, and as clearly as possible (1) .

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Khashoggi was then the lexicon of the ideal Saudi journalist, with an autobiography spanning the 1980s, including his work in the most popular newspapers in the kingdom, such as Okaz and Asharq Al-Awsat, through his work in Al-Madina, one of the oldest Saudi newspapers for nine years. From 1991 to 1999 (2) , a period that also included the trust of the royal family while working as an external correspondent in Afghanistan, Algeria, Sudan, and other countries, earned him extensive relations with influential princes of the House of Saud, especially the late King Faisal's wing, as well as likely relations. With Saudi intelligence because of his proximity and his work as a media Its historic president, Prince Turki al-Faisal al-Saud, does not end with a deep experience that included multiple meetings and a "friendly" relationship with Osama bin Laden, the late founder of the global jihad system as we know it. In short, a journalist of this weight could not have been badly touched by the Saudi government and influence, assuming in mid-2003 the post of editor of Al-Watan for the first time, but then-renowned Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz had a different opinion.

Khashoggi probably did not realize, at the time of his famous essay, that it would turn him into the grip of the "religious kingdom" in this way. Then, starting in May of the same year, a storm of "suicide" bombings struck the capital, diverting the streets of Riyadh to a sea of ​​blood, a sailor soon adopted by "al-Qaeda", targeting the housing complexes of foreigners residing in the Kingdom and the General Security Building, and with the state of anger and congestion Khashoggi wrote, criticizing Ibn Taymiyyah, the Hanbali jurist who is very important and favored by the Wahhabis, and in particular his fatwa, which included the “permissibility of killing Muslims if they hindered or prevented the killing of disbelievers.” .

Nayef did not wait much, and immediately overthrew the "Khashoggi" from the editorial "homeland" at a time may be record for his palace, where "Khashoggi" in the editorial only 52 days, before being dismissed with consecutive public questions from " Nayef "for« the orientations of the newspaper itself and its undeclared goals », while" Khashoggi "left the newspaper forming a pack of hostilities lurking, notably the enmity of the" General Presidency of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice "known as" CPVPV ", an enmity that has been chasing him until He was removed again, in the same manner as Nayef, seven years later in May 2010, when the police of the Mutawwa Again, to close another chapter in the Saudi journalist's bus life, a man accused by his enemies of not being patriotic enough, was seen by some of those who knew him as more royal than the king, and dealt with him mostly in successive attempts - over the years - To understand his volatile trends until the moment of his disappearance without a trace.

"Khashoggi" National: "Wonderful Kingdom"

Praise be to Allaah that he ordered our country to rule by his book and the Sunnah of his prophet, knowing the halal and haram, opened his mind and heart to scientists and the virtues and experts, he said to people refer to me, he did not impose the vision of one man even if he thinks good faith in it

-An article (4) "Khashoggi" speaking of King "Abdullah" .. Editorial newspaper "home" .. 2009

Saddam al-Shathri and Khashoggi are perhaps among the most memorable of the Saudis in any case, a former headline station in which the veteran journalist fully supported the Renaissance project and the grand reform initiative led by the late King Abdullah. Abdul Aziz Al Saud "In the second half of the last decade, all the campaign carried out by the initiative" campaigns against corruption "- as it was called at the time - and many dismissals, as well as significant changes in Saudi foreign policy.

Sheikh Saad al-Shathiri was a rare Saudi event at the time.He was one of the most prominent newcomers to the Saudi Council of Senior Scholars, the highest religious body in the Kingdom.He joined it with the support of King Abdullah himself in 2005. Launched at the age of 39, he remained a rising member of the commission at a time when the king was moving to disrupt the influence of the religious class in the kingdom, but it was a slow move commensurate with the historical understanding in Saudi Arabia between the palace and the clergy.

All this changed in 2009 when the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) project came to light, a project of enormous magnitude but a huge concern for the religious class of the Kingdom, where it began to raise objections and fears of the prevalence of gender mixing at the university, which was Weird and always forbidden in the Saudi interior, and there was no more appropriate than the rising star of the body, Sheikh "Shathri" to announce these fears quite clearly, and to be stated in a televised interview on the channel glory satellite.

This was the beginning of a wave of pens and articles that targeted al-Shutri personally and implicitly, and at the time, as expected in a country that controlled almost entirely the local media, more than 30 editorials and articles criticized at best his statements. One of the most important was the editorial of the homeland, which was written by Khashoggi himself, who did not skimp on Al-Shathri with all his seriousness, accusing him of "provoking sedition" and of inadvertently providing justifications to Saudi extremist factions for the remnants of Al-Qaeda there. Describing some of his fears as a "comic picture," reminding him of the beginning that he had been appointed Support and support for the king himself. Indeed, it was not long before the royal order to remove al-Shathri and remove him from the Council of Senior Scholars, in a historical precedent (5) for the intervention of any Saudi king to remove one of its members since its establishment in 1971.

The last decade, especially the end, has always been a desperate defense of Khashoggi for the policies of the kingdom and the late King Abdullah, where he was fully supportive of the awakening of reform at the time, as well as not sparing no effort in supporting and defending the military campaign launched by the king in the same year. The Houthi armed group in the northern Yemeni city of Saada, on the border of the Kingdom, is an air campaign and bombing that Khashoggi deemed necessary to secure the kingdom from within and deter what he called "attempts to sequence Houthi fighters to Saudi depth."

"Al-Jazeera interview with Houthi in the presence of Khashoggi - 2009"

But his most important support was King Abdullah's widespread and unusual dismissal campaign as a key step in the Saudi reform agenda at the time, a campaign that affected nearly 150 (6) different locations, much of it in the royal corridors, where Khashoggi invested his favorite position. _ After returning to the editorial headquarters of the "homeland" _ and began to build positive publicity for the reform project in foreign media, saying that «new recruits not only bring new blood, but also new ideas .. They are more moderate .. They are not only implementers of the project, but They believe in him. '' (7)

These were the headlines in the march of the veteran journalist, but from the point of view of his highly patriotic face, a believer in the royal court and the Saudi state, and perhaps in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, the world did not know his first enthusiasm towards the royal family, especially towards the current Saudi regime led by the king. Salman bin Abdul Aziz, "and is actually led by his crown prince and Minister of Defense," Mohammed bin Salman, "but he certainly retained his absolute loyalty to the state itself even in some of its serious regional mistakes, at least until a year ago before he began his opposition more prominent and bold, They remained conservative opposition Although public, the regime and bin Salman did not exceed his personal red lines.

Reformist Khashoggi: Occupied Saudi Arabia

"The story of our dealings with cheap foreign labor, which has turned into an addiction, and I always use the word addiction because we believe that we can not and does not our economy without it, began in the first boom years .. In particular after the famous October war in 1973 .."

(Jamal Khashoggi, in a lecture on his book "Occupying the Saudi Market", Qassim Literary Club, Saudi Arabia, 2014)

Khashoggi was one of the first to describe the state of the Saudi economy as an "occupying economy" in his well-known book "Occupying the Saudi Market", which was not easy in a country that has always maintained the recruitment of foreign workers periodically and densely so far, although that intensity has decreased The fees imposed on those laborers day after day after the assumption of "Ibn Salman" to the reign of the Covenant, but "Khashoggi" was adopting the view like that for a long time before, so he always saw that the treatment of the Saudi economy will only be shocked.

Khashoggi believes that the Saudi economy is an economy that has “lost its way”. It has not become a modern economy for a middle class country like most of the world, nor has it become a Gulf economy such as that of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, citing them specifically, but lost in the middle of the Renaissance journey, causing high unemployment rates. In addition to an economy he implicitly described as a parasite, that is, growing within and on the back of the Kingdom's economy, but without benefiting from it of any kind.

Therefore, Khashoggi's reformist face staged a radical solution of suddenly deporting a large percentage of foreign workers from the Kingdom. This solution was for him a reformist par excellence. In his conception, the deportation process would create a series of crises and economic chaos which he called “creative chaos”. Condoleezza Rice's favorite, but crises, will quickly rid the Saudis of the “addiction” of foreign labor and addiction to inaction quickly, and will soon enter the labor market, occupying a fair amount of traumatic labor vacuum.

With such an economic solution and conviction, it was logical for the veteran journalist to fully welcome the vision of Bin Salman (Saudi Arabia 2030), launched by the Crown Prince at the beginning of 2016, referring to what the young prince said in a meeting with a group of journalists and intellectuals. The press has a role to protect and monitor the implementation of the vision, to write "Khashoggi" at the time on his personal account on the social networking site "Twitter": «I will protect it», accompanied by a copy of the vision signed by him, "bin Salman" himself. (8)

"Khashoggi" has always been a supporter of the Arab Spring, and his articles during that period and group in the book "Arab Spring: the time of the Muslim Brotherhood", many of the manifestations of that support, but at the same time, and in line with his nationalism, he maintained his reformist face with King Salman His son, when he effectively took the reins of the country, and began his relationship with them by phone received from the "Salman" to praise the latter after Khashoggi defended the Riyadh regime during the time of the Afghan jihad in a televised meeting (9) , and then supported the expert journalist the new king a few days later in his very large (10) , which has the powers to replace his predecessor , "Abdul the centers E "late January 2015, and supported the storm firmness when it was launched in March immediately following the same year, and defended strongly, especially when criticized by the Egyptian Shiite leader," Ahmed al-Nafis "dubbed" storms of let down ", and demanded the Egyptian media to stop abusing the Kingdom Before joining the young prince in his economic vision until the end of 2016 and the beginning of last year 2017, when Khashoggi's last face began to emerge strongly.

Revolutionary "Khashoggi": Kingdom of Repression

“This time, I made a different choice. I left my home, my family, my job, and raised my voice. If I did otherwise, I would betray those in prison. I can raise my voice when many can't. I want you to know that this was not always the case with Saudi Arabia, we Saudis deserve better than what is happening »

(Jamal Khashoggi, from his article, “Saudi Arabia Was Not So Repressive… Currently Unbearable”, Washington Post, September 18, 2017.)

No one could have imagined, especially those who had followed Khashoggi for many years, that the famous Saudi journalist would raise his voice, even from his actual exile, with words such as those that he kept saying and writing throughout the last quarter of last year and this year. These words were loaded with a Saudi opposition that is rarely seen by the public in any case. The opposition, despite its reservations and the distinction of its expert author between his criticism of the monarchy and the state, has been saturated with the breeze of the Arab Spring, so to speak, and Khashoggi seems to remember, as he wrote above. He raised his voice, more than he seemed to bear the royal palace of Riyadh.

Although the beginning of the actual tensions between him and his royal court came immediately after the election of Donald Trump, when he warned "Khashoggi" of the excessive welcome from his country to "Trump", which led to punish and restrict him in his media platforms and stop his articles for Al-Hayat newspaper, however, Almost on his writing in the "Washington Post" remains the most important as a ceremony with almost all kinds of criticism and political opposition, a period that was particularly important due to the fame and influence of the global newspaper.

The "Arab Spring Opposition" began his journey with the American newspaper with an article in his headline that described the kingdom as becoming "unbearably repressive." Then he raised the ceiling of criticism in his second article, criticizing bin Salman in his war against "extremists", saying that the young prince was chasing the wrong parties. Criticizing him for allowing successive arrests of Saudi opinion and human rights activists in September and October of last year, he noted his attention - noteworthy liberal behavior - that some of the most senior members of the "Senior Scholars Committee" close to the crown prince had "extreme ideas" as he put it. However, his third article was tense D direct, comparing "bin Salman" to Russian President "Vladimir Putin" in his attempt to collect the keys to the power of the Saudi royal court in his hands.

The article "Putin" was a very clear notice that "Khashoggi" has moved to the field of opposing opinion actually exceeded the red lines of the Saudi royal court a wide distance, and did not stop the Saudi thinker at this point, criticizing in the article immediately following the Riyadh policy in Beirut, accusing it of being « It creates chaos in Lebanon, ”he said, and then another article described what the kingdom did in Yemen as“ completely destroyed ”, advising the crown prince to learn from what King Faisal did in 1965 when he sponsored the peace negotiations that ended Yemen's first civil war and instructed him to end. Storm firmness, "and ends his campaign against political Islam And also to end the lack of tolerance with freedom of expression and opinion.

So, Khashoggi actually turned to exhibitions of opinions and words that could not be misunderstood or interpreted, and although the famous journalist professor showed his "revolutionary" face to say so clearly, he kept - even killed in the Kingdom consulate in Istanbul, Turkey - a hair Muawiya did not go beyond the Saudi king or Bin Salman, and he was brilliantly balancing his high-profile and possibly influential opposition with his patriotism that always respects the royal court.All of this, like Khashoggi, is a complex combination of both sharp and discreet political opposition. All this, however, seems to have been insufficient for an authority that has begun to establish its legitimacy by arresting and silencing any possibility of any “dissenting” and even dissenting voice.

A year after Khashoggi's assassination, the information surfaced about the circumstances of his assassination, and the Crown Prince's departure just days ago to declare that the Saudi "state" took responsibility for the crime, a recognition that seemed to usher in the removal of the Crown Prince from any direct responsibility for that heinous crime. The Saudi authorities' dilution of the assassination case, and the accountability of those directly responsible to the public, seem unlikely to be close anyway, unless the Saudi authorities, under international pressure, decide to provide scapegoats, to protect the real perpetrators of one of the most heinous crimes and the most uproar, in the last few years. Yeh.