Jamal Khashoggi Killing — Joining the Dots
The riddle of Jamal Khashoggi’s brutal killing inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul is solved once his background and career trajectory is looked into and the mystery is unraveled when different pieces of the puzzle are placed together.
While it is well known that Khashoggi was certainly no liberal and had been a firm supporter and spokesperson of the Saudi regime, what appears to be bewildering is how he turned from a formidable regime loyalist to a detractor calling for more press freedom in the Middle East.
Hailing from an influential Saudi family, he was the nephew of the Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi.
Khashoggi started his career in journalism after graduating from the US and then reporting, editing for many Saudi state-owned media houses.
In the early 1980s, he reported from Afghanistan and was sympathetic to the US and Saudi funded Mujahideens who were battling the Soviets.
It is said he went to Afghanistan on the personal invitation of Osama Bin Laden to witness the 'Holy War' for himself.
Now, it goes without saying that to be a journalist in a totalitarian state one has to be a mouthpiece of the state, adept at image burnishing exercises, and a pliant ventriloquist of the princes who own the newspaper and decide what will go to print the next day.
There isn't even a semblance of press freedom in Saudi Arabia and Khashoggi worked his way to the top only by being in the good books of the Saudi ruling elite and engaging in public relations for them.
Khashoggi was an advisor to Prince Faisal-Al-Turki, the former chief of Saudi intelligence agency and a former ambassador to US and UK. He purchased his condo in Virginia around the same time when he was serving as the official advisor to Prince Turki, who was considered CIA's go to guy in Saudi Arabia.
Khashoggi was also close to the billionaire businessman prince Alwaleed Bin Taleb and the deposed former heir apparent Muhammad Bin Nayef, who again had close working relationship with the CIA.
The 31-year-old whimsical and erratic Muhammad Bin Salman started a purge not only against political opponents or dissidents, as was the unwritten norm in Saudi Arabia, but also against business elites and members of the royal family who were supposedly opposed to him holding the reigns of power without any consultation with other senior princes.
None imagined that this intra-palace power play and behind-the-scenes intrigue would soon play out in the open and lead to an unprecedented crackdown, with members of the royal family being accused of corruption and embezzlement and put under house arrest in the upscale Ritz Carlton Hotel in Riyadh.
Khashoggi had no disagreement with any of Muhammad Bin Salman’s strategic or foreign policies. Be it encirclement of Iran, intervention in Bahrain, aggression in Syria, or indiscriminate bombing of Yemen to ward off the growing influence of Iran and Hezbollah in their own backyard, he supported them all.
Domestically too, he endorsed gradual reformism undertaken by the de-facto ruler and welcomed allowing women to sit behind the steering wheel and cinema halls being reopened after more than three decades.
What then really went wrong between Khashoggi and Muhammad Bin Salman that it prompted a long time Saudi loyalist to turn into a reluctant dissident?
In the wake of the purge and crackdown on Saudi elite and princes, including many friends and patrons of Khashoggi, he started being vocal against the hamhanded and 'dictatorial' policies of Muhammad Bin Salman.
As a reaction to his vocal criticism, Saudi government blocked his Twitter account and he was forbidden to write anything in the kingdom.
He soon packed his bags and went on a self-imposed exile to the US. In the US, he started writing columns for the Washington Post Global Opinions and predictably emerged as the conscience keeper of the Arab world with articles that were certain to resonate with the West – 'How MBS is the Putin of the Middle East' or how Saudi Arabia is becoming a scary place ( As if it wasn’t before MBS took the reigns of power).
In a couple of years, he was firmly established in USA and firing volleys against MBS – through his columns which were translated into Arabic as well and widely disseminated – who brooks no dissent and operates like a mafia boss when it comes to muzzling the voice of his critics.
I have a hunch, and it is being validated by the fake tears and contrived outrage of the western establishment, that Khashoggi was certainly not acting on his own volition.
He was possibly working at the behest of a powerful Saudi faction opposed to MBS and its backers in the CIA.
Things are rarely as simple and linear as they appear. And Khashoggi certainly wasn't someone who had found his calling or whose conscience had suddenly awaken.
He was, possibly, being used as a pawn in the intelligence machinations, whose objectives are too complex to be reckoned.