WaPo Opinion: What would Jamal Khashoggi think of Saudi Arabia today?

[FakeNoose]

WaPo link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/09/29/jamal-khashoggi-murder-mbs-saudi-arabia-five-years/

Archived (no paywall) link: https://archive.ph/B29Ra

If my late colleague and friend Jamal Khashoggi could see Saudi Arabia today, five years after his murder by agents of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, what would he find? Khashoggi would surely be disgusted, but not surprised, that the autocratic power of MBS, as the crown prince is known, continues untouched. If anything, the Saudi royal is more firmly in control of the instruments of political repression than he was five years ago.

Khashoggi would probably scoff at MBS’s promises that such a murder will never happen again. The kingdom has created national-security committees that, in theory, would prevent such a brazen attack. But those promises, by themselves, are no more binding than “the paper they’re written on,” in the words of John Brennan, a former CIA director and Riyadh station chief....

But Khashoggi would observe other things in the kingdom that would astonish and please him. Above all, he would be struck by the empowerment of women — a bright light that shines, paradoxically, in a country ruled in deep shadow.

Returning to the kingdom, Khashoggi would witness changes he had hoped for, while he was alive, but doubted would happen. Women not only can drive, a freedom they were granted in 2018, a few months before his murder, but they are now largely free of the tutelage of men. They can mix freely with men at concerts and sporting events. Many are unveiled. Saudi women today are ambassadors, business executives even astronauts.

- more at link -

OK, I learned a lot here. MBS is still a bad guy but ... he's been effective at modernizing certain things in Saudi Arabia.

This is an interesting column by David Ignatius who was a long-time friend and colleague of Mr. Khashoggi. Mr. Ignatius emphasizes that his friend Jamal was well-acquainted with MBS. Jamal saw the danger when MBS became the Saudi Royal Crown Prince in 2017, and it eventually led to Jamal's brutal death a year later.

[Phoenix61]

1. MBS allows the changes necessary to play ball with the

rest of the industrialized world. Sadly, the brazen murder of Jamal has not seemed to diminish MBS’s standing in the world.