Tag: Saudi Arabia

What purpose does the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) serve? | Explained

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From left, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida (Japan), Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni (Italy), President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, Prime Minister Narendra Modi (India), President Joe Biden (U.S), President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (UAE) and President Emmanuel Macron (France) attend Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment event on the day of the G20 summit in New Delhi, India, on September 9, 2023.
| Photo Credit: AP

The story so far: At a special event on the sidelines of the recently concluded G20 summit in New Delhi, a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed to establish the ‘India-Middle East- Europe Economic Corridor’ (IMEC). Other than the two co-chairs of the event, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and U.S. President Joe Biden, the signatories included leaders of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the European Union (EU), Italy, France and Germany.

The project, which forms part of the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII), may also serve as a counter to China’s economic influence in the Eurasian region, observers have suggested.

What is the corridor? 

The proposed IMEC will consist of railroad, ship-to-rail networks (road and sea) and road transport routes (and networks) extending across two corridors, that is, the east corridor – connecting India to the Gulf, and the northern corridor – connecting the Gulf to Europe. As per the MoU, the railway, upon completion, would provide a “reliable and cost-effective cross-border ship-to-rail transit network to supplement existing maritime and road transports routes”. 

It would enable the transportation of goods and services from India to the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel and Europe, and back. All in all, it is expected that the corridor would increase efficiency (relating to transit), reduce costs, enhance economic unity, generate jobs, and lower greenhouse gas emissions. This is expected to translate into a “transformative integration of Asia, Europe and the Middle East.” 

The MoU states that participants, intend to enable the laying of cables for electricity and digital connectivity, as well as pipes for clean hydrogen export along the railway route.

The MoU states that participants will “work collectively and expeditiously” to arrange and implement all elements of the transit route. These relate to technical design, financing, legal and relevant regulatory standards. A meeting is planned in the next sixty days to carve out an “action plan” with “relevant timetables”. 

How has it been received? 

While Mr. Modi suggested the corridor “promises to be a beacon of cooperation, innovation, and shared progress,” Mr. Biden referred to it as the “real big deal”. 

Ms. von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, said the corridor was “more than ‘just’ a railway or a cable, it is a green and digital bridge across continents and civilisations.” She called it the “most direct connection” between India, the Gulf and Europe: with a rail link that would make trade between India and Europe 40% faster. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose country will also be a part of the corridor, also welcomed the move. He said that the link would help realise “a multi-year vision that will change the face of the Middle East, and Israel, and will affect the entire world.” 

On the other hand, with the corridor being suggested as a competitor for China’s BRI, the announcement did not draw enthusiasm from the Chinese media. An editorial in the Global Times highlighted doubts from Chinese experts about the project’s credibility and feasibility. T “It is not the first time for Washington to make empty pledges to various countries and regions,” it read. 

What geopolitics is at play here? 

It has often been believed that China is utilising the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) from the Indo-Pacific to West Asia to further their economic and political influence, particularly on sovereigns with relatively instable economies.  Financial Times  points out that, for the U.S., the project could also serve to counter Beijing’s influence “at a time when Washington’s traditional Arab partners, including the UAE and Saudi Arabia, are deepening ties with China, India and other Asian powers.” 

Professor Michaël Tanchum, Senior Fellow at the Austrian Institute for European and Security Policy, said in August 2021 that a corridor connecting India to Europe via West Asia and the Mediterranean region could serve as an “alternative trans-regional commercial transportation route” to the troubled Chabahar-based International North-South Transit Corridor. “Instead of Chabahar, the ports of the UAE —India’s third largest trading partner — would serve as the Indian Ocean connectivity node,” he said. 

He observed that from Mumbai, Indian goods shipped by this route could arrive on the European mainland in as less as 10 days — 40% faster than through the Suez Canal maritime route. 

Professor Tanchum also observed that India’s “careful cultivation” of multilateral economic cooperation with such a corridor “was of paramount importance.” According to him, “Despite India’s favourable demographics, geography and commercial transportation infrastructure are not alone sufficient to ensure that India will realise its potential as a Eurasian economic power.” He further elaborated that, “Commercial corridors only emerge where requisite large investments in port and rail infrastructure are coupled with an industrial base anchored in manufacturing value chains”— precisely the purpose of the present corridor. 

This corridor may also hint at further normalisation of ties between Israel and the countries in the Gulf. 

How does this relate to the Israel and Gulf relationship?

Saudi Arabia and Israel do not have diplomatic ties —primarily because of differences of opinion about the Israel-Palestine conflict. In fact, Israel has official ties with only Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco in the Arab region. In this light, the transit network which seeks integration on multiple fronts assumes particular significance. 

Financial Times learnt from a person briefed about the discussions, that the corridor’s passage through Jordan and Israel could also support the Biden administration’s effort to build on the recent normalisation of ties between Israel and several Arab states, including the UAE. This may push Saudi Arabia to follow suit and formalise ties. “China is one factor. The U.S. is also trying to refocus attention on the region, to reassure traditional partners and to maintain influence,” the publication learnt. 

With Saudi Arabia being the world’s top exporter of oil and UAE being West Asia’s dominant finance centre, the publication writes that both are “seeking to project themselves as key logistics and trade hubs between east and west.” 

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Crimes ‘beyond imagination’: Saudi border guards killed hundreds of migrants, HRW report says

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Between March 2022 and June 2023, Saudi border guards killed hundreds of Ethiopian migrants attempting to cross the border from Yemen into the oil-rich kingdom, according to a new Human Rights Watch report released on Monday. The report comes as Saudi Arabia implements an anti-migrant policy at home and a campaign to boost its image abroad.

The rocky, mountainous region around Sadaa – a hardscrabble city in northern Yemen right by the Saudi border – has turned into lethal terrain, according to human rights groups. Bodies of dead or seriously wounded migrants, mostly from Ethiopia, have been spotted in satellite imagery and social media posts from the border, providing harrowing testimony of abuses, notes the latest report by the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW).

“They Fired on Us Like Rain”, an HRW report released on Monday, August 21, records widespread abuses committed on the Yemen-Saudi border between March 2022 and June 2023.

“Saudi border guards have used explosive weapons and shot people at close range, including women and children, in a pattern that is widespread and systematic. If committed as part of a Saudi government policy to murder migrants, these killings would be a crime against humanity,” notes the report.

‘Guards forced 17-year-old boy to rape girl survivors’


Over the past few months, reports have been mounting of grievous violations on the migration track known as the “Eastern Route” or the “Yemeni Route”, which runs from the Horn of Africa, across the Gulf of Aden, through Yemen and into Saudi Arabia.

A July 5 report by the Mixed Migration Centre, an independent data institution within the Danish Refugee Council, said Ethiopians were being “systematically” killed by “security officials operating under Saudi Arabian state authority”.

In October 2022, the UN published its Expert Communications by special rapporteurs and working groups highlighting cross-border killings, “using artillery shelling and small arms fired by Saudi security forces”. Nearly 430 people were killed between January 1 and April 30, 2022, according to the communique.

The latest HRW report provides witness accounts of Ethiopian migrants who tried to cross the border from Yemen to Saudi Arabia – and it makes grim reading.

‘I saw 30 killed people on the spot’

In February 2023, a 14-year-old from Ethiopia’s Oromia region, identified in the HRW report as “Hamdiya”, attempted to cross the Yemeni-Saudi border in a group of around 60 people.

The horror unfolded immediately after they crossed into Saudi territory, when they came under attack by border guards, Hamdiya told HRW.  

“I saw people killed in a way I have never imagined,” said Hamdiya. “I saw 30 killed people on the spot.”

In a bid to escape the repeated firing, the Ethiopian teenager crawled under a rock and at some point, fell asleep. “I could feel people sleeping around me. I realised what I thought were people sleeping around me were actually dead bodies. I woke up and I was alone,” she said.

Like Hamdiya, many witnesses claimed to have been shot with mortars or other explosive weapons by Saudi border guards.

‘The dead bodies are there’

In one incident, a survivor recounted that he was part of a group of 170 people who attempted to cross the border when they came under fire. “I know 90 people were killed, because some returned to that place to pick up the dead bodies – they counted around 90 dead bodies,” he explained.

Another interviewee went to the Saudi border to collect the body of a girl from his village. “Her body was piled up on top of 20 bodies,” he said. “It is really impossible to count the number. It is beyond the imagination. People are going in different groups day to day. The dead bodies are there.”

While the exact number of migrants killed while crossing the border is impossible to determine, the HRW report was compiled from interviews with 42 Ethiopians or relatives of Ethiopians who attempted the border crossing. The rights group also analysed more than 350 videos and photographs posted on social media or gathered from other sources in addition to satellite imagery.

Data gathering from the remote border area is hampered by the lack of international mechanisms to monitor the human rights situation in Yemen.

Barely two years ago, the UN Human Rights Council voted to disband the Group of Eminent Experts on Yemen (GEE), an international investigating body, following a “tireless lobbying campaign” by Saudi Arabia, according to a 2021 HRW statement.

The decision has left no system of accountability in the world’s poorest Arab nation ravaged by a civil war that has killed more than 150,000 people. It is also failing citizens on another continent who are fleeing poverty and ethnic conflict.

‘Saudization’ increases targeting of migrants

An estimated 750,000 Ethiopians currently live in Saudi Arabia according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Roughly 500,000 entered the country illegally, according to the IOM, forcing them to hide from Saudi authorities.

The oil-rich Gulf kingdom has long been a magnet for impoverished migrants in the region, particularly from Yemen, which shares a 1,300-kilometre border with Saudi Arabia. Non-Saudi nationals account for more than 30 percent of the kingdom’s population.

But in 2017, Riyadh implemented a massive “Saudization” policy, aimed at reducing its dependence on migrant workers. It resulted in intensified police crackdowns, detentions of illegal migrants and massive expulsion campaigns.

Riyadh’s “Saudization” policy came as fighting raged in neighbouring Yemen and in the Horn of Africa, turning migrants into pawns in regional tensions.

Pawns in regional conflicts

In Yemen, a civil war erupted in 2014 when Iran-backed Houthi rebels swept down from their northern stronghold and chased the internationally recognised government from the capital, Sanaa. A Saudi-led coalition intervened the following year on behalf of the government, and in time the conflict turned into a proxy war between Riyadh and Tehran.

The restoration of ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran in April sparked hopes of an end to the conflict. But Houthi attacks have picked up over the past few weeks, prompting a warning by UN special envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg of “public threats to return to war”.

Across the Gulf of Aden, conflict erupted in Ethiopia in the northern Tigray region, between Ethiopian military forces and Tigrayan troops along with allied Oromo militants. Following a Tigrayan peace deal in November, fighting erupted in the Amhara region over the Ethiopian military’s efforts to disband Amhara militias who fought with the army against Tigrayan rebels, exposing the country’s deteriorating ethnic relations.

Saudi Arabia has long been a destination for Ethiopian migrants, but following the conflicts in the region, their situation has turned desperate. In April 2020, Houthi fighters forcibly expelled thousands of Ethiopian migrants from northern Yemen, forcing them to cross the border into Saudi Arabia. Several dozen of them were killed and many survivors sent to detention centres on the border. Violations in Yemeni detention centres have been extreme, with rights groups documenting allegations of torture and rape.

The latest escalation of violations along the Saudi-Yemen border appears to be “deliberate” and “targeted”, according to HRW.

“While Human Rights Watch has previously documented killings of migrants at the border with Yemen and Saudi Arabia since 2014, the killings documented in this report appear to be a deliberate escalation in both the number and manner of targeted killings,” notes the report.

“In recent years, Saudi Arabia has invested heavily in deflecting attention from its abysmal human rights record at home and abroad, spending billions of dollars to host major entertainment, cultural, and sporting events,” the report notes.

Less than five years after Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was dismembered in Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul, Western nations are warming up to the kingdom’s crown prince and de-facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, as the Ukraine war unleashes tectonic geopolitical shifts, particularly in the energy sector.

The findings of the latest report highlight the need for international calls for accountability, according to Nadia Hardman, author of the HRW report.

“Concerned governments should publicly call for Saudi Arabia to end any policy, whether explicit or in effect, to target migrants with explosive weapons and close-range attacks,” noted Hardman. “Human Rights Watch calls on organisers and participants in major international events sponsored by the Saudi government to speak out publicly on rights issues or, when whitewashing Saudi Arabia’s human rights record is the primary purpose, not to participate.”

This article is a translation of the original in French.

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Rebranded Saudi crown prince meets Macron as rights groups decry ‘hypocrisy’

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Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman meets French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Friday at the start of a visit aimed at boosting bilateral ties and the oil kingdom’s standing in the international community. But human rights groups warn that the Saudi’s gain is France’s loss on an increasingly divided global stage.  

Less than five years after Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed and dismembered in Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman meets French President Emmanuel Macron for a working lunch in Paris on Friday.

The rehabilitation of the man the CIA determined had “approved” the Istanbul consulate operation is now a done deal. The transformation of the Saudi crown prince from “pariah” – a term Joe Biden used on the US presidential campaign trail – to indispensable diplomatic figure has been quick and thorough, marking an era of realpolitik on steroids.

Since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler – known widely as “MBS” – has emerged from global isolation to meet and greet leaders who were once wary of engaging with the young, brash crown price with a tarnished human rights record.

Last summer, Biden met bin Salman in the Saudi port city of Jeddah, where the two leaders fist-bumped, sparking condemnations from the likes of Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff, who called it “a visual reminder of the continuing grip oil-rich autocrats have on US foreign policy”.

A week later, bin Salman – known widely as “MBS” – was in Paris, where he was greeted with a more cordial handshake with Macron at the Élysée presidential palace.

French President Emmanuel Macron greets Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman with a handshake in Paris on July 28, 2022. © Lewis Joly, AP

The war in Ukraine has unleashed tectonic geopolitical shifts, opening divides between the so-called “West”, backing Kyiv against Russian aggression, and countries who view themselves as part of the “Global South”, that have refused to take a position on the conflict.

The Global South’s proclaimed neutrality has not convinced critics, who argue that transactional foreign policy in effect translates as a pro-Russian position. Saudi Arabia, the world’s second-largest oil producer, is particularly susceptible to the criticism. The kingdom’s decision, at an October 22 OPEC+ Plus summit, to cut oil production to keep prices high, was viewed as a deliberate snub to the US and Europe preparing for a difficult winter.

The schedule of bin Salman’s second visit to France since the Russian invasion of Ukraine reflects the changing dynamics on the global stage. It’s also a case study in how a leader once shunned in most capitals has managed to cater to the imperatives of global powers while fulfilling his own agenda.

Wooing leaders with an eye on 2030

The Saudi crown prince’s latest visit is not a rushed one. MBS left the kingdom on Wednesday, according to the Saudi Royal Court, for France, where he owns the Chateau Louis XIV, a modern building in Versailles that seeks to replicate the opulence of French imperial palaces.

Following his Friday working lunch with Macron at the Élysée palace, bin Salman will attend a reception in Paris on Monday to support Riyadh’s bid to host the World Expo 2030, also called the “universal exhibition”.

Days later, the Saudi crown prince will attend the June 22-23 Summit for a New Global Financing Pact hosted by Macron.

The French president announced the summit at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt in November, which is aimed at building “a new contract between the countries of the North and the South to address climate change and the global crisis”, according to the official website.

While Macron aims to try to bridge the North-South divide exacerbated by the Ukraine war, the Saudi crown prince has his own agenda during his French visit. “Mohammed bin Salman wants to enjoy the presence of many leaders, from Africa mainly, in order to get their support, their vote, for the universal exhibition [Expo 2030] … it’s a file that MBS is personally following. This is the reason for his long presence in France,” explained Georges Malbrunot, senior reporter at the French daily, Le Figaro, in an interview with FRANCE 24.

“There are different topics on the agenda: Ukraine, Lebanon, etcetera. It’s a kind of public relations operation for Mohammed bin Salman, who was a pariah five years ago after the horrible Jamal Khashoggi assassination,” said Malbrunot. “But he’s an international actor now. Nobody can avoid him.”

 


 

Hosting the World Expo 2030 has turned into a hot button issue, with more than a dozen human rights groups writing an open letter to the Paris-based Bureau International des Expositions (BIE), urging the world fair organiser to drop the Saudi candidacy due to its “abysmal” human rights record.

But 2030 is a critical year for the Gulf kingdom since it marks the target date for Vision 2030, an ambitious economic diversification and reform plan launched by the crown prince in 2016. Saudi Arabia is also bidding to host the 2030 FIFA World Cup. “For sure 2030 is a very important year for Saudi Arabia,” said Malbrunot.  “If he gets the universal expo for 2030, it will be a big victory for Saudi Arabia.”

Keeping various wives happy

Since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine began 18 months ago, the Middle East region has witnessed a complex realignment of powers, which some experts call the signs of a changing global order.

Earlier this year, China brokered a deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran, prompting a reopening of diplomatic ties between the region’s biggest rivals and hopes for a de-escalation of the war in Yemen, where the two powers waged a proxy war over the past eight years.

Beyond the Middle East, Saudi Arabia played a critical role last year in brokering a prisoner swap between Russia and Ukraine, which secured the release of 300 people.

Meanwhile the convergence of Russian and Saudi oil interests, which were on display during the October 2022 OPEC+ Plus meeting, have started to strain. While Saudi Arabia followed through on the agreement and exported less oil, Russia increased its sales, at cheap prices, to countries such as India and China.

As Global South hegemons – such as South Africa, Brazil and India – were under fire for their pro-Moscow tilt, Saudi Arabia managed a diplomatic tour de force last month – with a little help from France.

When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a surprise landing in Jeddah last month to address an Arab League summit, he arrived on a French Airbus emblazoned with the tricolour. France had flown in the Ukrainian leader for an important meeting, marking a diplomatic achievement for Paris.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky arrives in Saudi Arabia on May 19, 2023, on a French plane.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky arrives in Saudi Arabia on May 19, 2023, on a French plane. © Saudi Press Agency via AP

“Macron has become invested in helping rehabilitate MBS’s image on the global stage,” said Mohamad Bazzi, a professor and director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at New York University. “Most players in the Middle East region have an interest in conveying the message that the US is not the dominant power in the region anymore. The consistent Saudi messaging is that they have options other than the US. Macron might be trying to play the role as another peacemaker trying to de-escalate tensions in the region.”

Malbrunot describes the geopolitical shifts in terms of polygamy, which is legal in Saudi Arabia. “We used to have Saudi Arabia as a strategic ally with the US. Now with Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia has multiple wives. They still have the US wife, but not only. They have the Chinese wife now because China is the first country where they sell their oil. They have the Russian wife, they have the European wife,” explained Malbrunot.

The costs of ‘doing business with tyrants’

When it comes to Europe, France has always been more forgiving towards MBS than countries such as Germany and the Netherlands. The clemency was driven by weapons, not Christian values. Following Khashoggi’s assassination, France – unlike Germany and the Netherlands – refrained from suspending arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

Paris and Riyadh have mutually compatible agendas in the arms bazaar. The international arms transfer trends for 2022, released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), confirmed longstanding trends: Saudi Arabia ranks among the world’s top three arms importers while France is among the world’s top three arms exporters.

It’s a transactional relationship that draws the ire of Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), an NGO founded by Khashoggi. “Macron is basically rolling out the red carpet for Mohammed bin Salman to try to secure arms sales. Macron has really sold France and France’s values for a few golden francs,” said Whitson.

Nearly a year ago, when the Saudi crown prince made his first trip to France since Khashoggi’s killing, DAWN, along with other NGOs, filed a universal jurisdiction complaint before the Paris tribunal arguing that MBS is an accomplice to the torture, enforced disappearance, and the murder of Khashoggi.

But Paris has so far failed to appoint an investigative judge to examine the case, prompting DAWN to release a statement noting that the delay “suggests that French authorities are deliberately dragging their feet and politicising what should be a straightforward judicial procedure”.

“Macron is wagging a finger at other countries for selling arms to Russia, lecturing them about international law and scolding them for harming human rights. It’s a shocking display of hypocrisy,” said Whitson.

France is not the only Western power behaving hypocritically, concedes Whitson, pointing to the Biden administration’s decision in November to grant MBS immunity, as the head of the Saudi government, in a US legal case.

Malbrunot notes that bin Salman’s entry into the international fold under the current circumstances is inevitable. “He’s an actor in the Ukraine-Russian war, he’s an actor now in the Middle East with the rapprochement with Iran … realpolitik has taken the lead now. So Mohammed bin Salman can’t be avoided,” he noted.

When asked if Le Figaro’s readers would be outraged over Macron’s meeting with a leader castigated for his human rights records, Malbrunot believed it was not the case.

“I think they’re not upset anymore with the human rights record because, I guess, there is this aspect of reality, which can’t be denied, that Saudi Arabia is a very important country, not only in the oil market, but also diplomatically now,” he said.

Whitson, however, believes the resignation is dangerous. “French readers should understand that there is a cost of doing business with tyrants,” she said. “The cost is democracy. If dictatorships around the world can buy our governments with money, if they can undermine our values with money, we don’t stand a chance persuading the world that democracy and human rights matter when our governments are willing to sell ourselves for money.”



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Blinken Set To Travel To Beijing Amid Continuing U.S.-China Strains

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U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, a long-time confidant of President Joe Biden, will travel to Beijing amid continuing strains in relations between the world’s two largest economies as part of a trip that begins on June 16, the State Department said in a statement today.

“While in Beijing, Secretary Blinken will meet with senior PRC (People’s Republic of China) officials where he will discuss the importance of maintaining open lines of communication to responsibly manage the U.S.-PRC relationship,” the statement said. “He will also raise bilateral issues of concern, global and regional matters, and potential cooperation on shared transnational challenges.”

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Neither side has said whether Blinken, a journalist and lawyer earlier in his career, would meet Chinese President Xi Jinping. One likely topic would be a possible Xi visit to the U.S. for a meeting of APEC leaders in San Francisco in November. Blinken last week just concluded a trip to Saudi Arabia, where members of the Gulf Cooperation Council later gathered to express warm support of Arab-China business amid a big push by Beijing to expand its ties to that region.

Blinken’s visit follows the postponement of a planned trip earlier this year after an alleged spy balloon from China floated over the U.S. heartland in February, creating a political uproar in Congress. China later targeted U.S. companies in the mainland on security grounds, including due diligence and research firms Bain and Mintz Group, and announced an anti-espionage law to take effect on July 1 that American businesses fear could cover many routine business activities.

Biden last month called the balloon “silly” and has faced criticism for not making public an investigation into the matter. However, adding to pressure on already strained ties, the U.S. this week acknowledged that China has set up a spy base in Cuba, and added 31 Chinese companies to a list of businesses engaged in activity that hurt American security.

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U.S. business leaders looking to the China market as an offset to slow economic growth at home will privately support any lowering of tension between the two countries, though try to avoid any public comments owing to fears of being questioned by the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, a knowledgeable former diplomat said. That Congressional group is “committed to working on a bipartisan basis to build consensus on the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party and develop a plan of action to defend the American people, our economy, and our values,” according to its website.

The overall atmospherics of the U.S.-China economic relationship have improved somewhat following a series of high-level government meetings between the two countries. Daniel Kritenbrink, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, and China’s Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu held meetings on June 5 that both said were productive. China’s Commerce Minister Wang Wentao met U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo in Washington last month followed by a meeting with U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai in Detroit on the margins of an APEC trade gathering. Those meetings followed talks in May between U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan with Chinese Communist Party Politburo Member and Director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission Wang Yi in Vienna.

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk and JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon — both with business interests in China — have also visited the country in recent weeks. (See related post here.) Bill Gates reportedly arrived in Beijing today.

Tension soared after a Taiwan visit by then U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi last August prompted Beijing to cut back official contacts with the United States and to launch military drills around the island. The mainland claims sovereignty over self-ruled Taiwan, a democratically run economy of 24 million people that is one of the world’s most important semiconductor manufacturing centers.

In November, a meeting between Biden and Xi in Bali led to expectations the relationship between the two countries was going to stabilize. Relations plunged again, however, following the spy balloon incident.

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During the first term of the Obama Administration, Blinken was national security advisor to then-Vice President Joe Biden, according to Blinken’s State Department biography. “This was the continuation of a long professional relationship that stretched back to 2002,” it notes, when Blinken began his six-year stint as Democratic staff director for the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Then-Senator Biden was the chair of that committee from 2001 to 2003 and 2007 to 2009.

Earlier in his career, the department said, Blinken, a graduate of Harvard College and Columbia Law School, was a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies from 2001 and 2002. Before joining government, he also practiced law in New York and Paris. Blinken earlier was a reporter for The New Republic magazine.

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OPEC+ prepares for weekend meeting after Saudi warns speculators to ‘watch out’

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Led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, OPEC+ agreed in early October to reduce production by 2 million barrels per day from November.

Vladimir Simicek | Afp | Getty Images

The OPEC+ alliance of oil producers will decide further production policy steps over the weekend, as crude prices reflect an ongoing struggle between supply-demand fundamentals and broader macro-economic concerns.

After convening remotely throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, OPEC+ has returned to in-person meetings and will gather in Vienna on June 4. The OPEC ministers gather for a separate meeting unlikely to address output on June 3.

Ministers face an oil market rattled by supply volatility, demand uncertainty, and a prospective recession, which could throttle transport fuel consumption. Since October, OPEC+ — a 23-member alliance including heavyweights Russia and Saudi Arabia — has lowered output by 2 million barrels per day in an effort to combat lower demand. Some members have also announced additional voluntary cuts totaling 1.6 million barrels per day in April.

Group members are expected to coagulate their individual positions and proposals in the 24-48 hours before the meeting, some OPEC+ delegates told CNBC, speaking on condition of anonymity — while public comments so far have been conflicting.

On May 23, Saudi energy minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman warned oil market speculators they could face further pain ahead, in comments some have read as hinting further supply cuts could be in the cards.

“I keep advising [speculators] that they will be ouching. They did ouch in April. I don’t have to show my cards, I’m not [a] poker player … but I would just tell them, watch out,” he said at the time.

Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak later indicated that he expected no further steps from the OPEC+ meeting, but then said his comments were misinterpreted as downplaying an output cut, according to Russian state news agency Tass.

Russia and Saudi Arabia have been united in their public OPEC+ stance since a March 2020 dispute that led to the one-month dissolution of their oil partnership and an ensuing price war.

Moscow and Riyadh later mended ties through a new OPEC+ agreement to respond to a demand plunge driven by the Covid-19 pandemic — and have remained like-minded on OPEC+ matters since. Voiding the perception of a public rift, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on Thursday met on the sidelines of a BRICS summit in Cape Town.

The two reviewed the cooperation between their countries and “ways to strengthen & develop them in all fields, in addition to discussing the consolidation of bilateral & multilateral action,” according to the Saudi foreign ministry.

Two OPEC+ delegates, who did not want to be named due to the market sensitivity of the meeting, told CNBC that further output cuts were unlikely this weekend. One noted that this will remain the case unless demand stays low in China — where recovery has fallen short of expectations, in the wake of shedding strict Covid-19 restrictions.

A third source said that OPEC+, which prioritizes the state of global inventories over outright prices, would be comfortable with futures above $75 per barrel, while a fourth estimated near $70-80 per barrel.

Brent futures with August expiry were trading at $75.70 per barrel at 10:24 a.m. in London, up $1.42 per barrel from the Thursday settlement.

The OPEC+ group isn’t “after spikes” and seeks a “balanced market,” the fourth delegate told CNBC, stressing that the alliance must continue to strike a “precautionary” production strategy. Deep cuts also risk re-attracting U.S. ire, as Washington has historically criticized supply reductions that pile strain on consuming households.

‘Wait and see’?

Goldman Sachs’ analysts expect OPEC+ to keep production unchanged this weekend. However, they said in a note Wednesday that they see a “sizeable 35% subjective probability” of further OPEC cuts, as oil prices are “clearly below our $80-85/bbl estimate of the OPEC put. Very low positioning, the Saudi determination not to give speculators free rein, and the decision to meet in person also suggest that deeper cuts will likely be discussed.”

OPEC+ has waded stormy waters for the better part of the year. Oil markets have historically been steered by physical supply and demand fundamentals — which have been increasingly overshadowed by broader macro-economic concerns over the fuel consumption impact of high inflation, bolstering interest rates and the spring collapse of several U.S. and European banks.

OPEC+ delegates also said the group had been following U.S. debt ceiling negotiations, as the proposal of President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy transited several debate and vote stages in a bid for the world’s largest economy to avoid defaulting on its bills.

“The impact of higher oil prices on the global economy will weigh heavily on the ministers’ minds,” Jorge Leon, senior vice president of oil market research at Rystad Energy, said in a Thursday note, adding that OPEC+ could maintain production as a precaution. “The ministers might therefore take a ‘wait and see’ approach and hold off taking any action. Demand forecasts remain lukewarm at best, so maintaining current output could be the most prudent course. “

Supply is also under question, given involuntary declines.

Roughly 450,000 barrels per day of northern Iraqi exports were frozen by a legal dispute between Baghdad, Ankara, and the Kurdistan Regional Government. Nigeria, typically West Africa’s largest oil producer, self-reported its April crude production at just 999,000 barrels per day following disruptions, according to OPEC’s Monthly Oil Market Report for May.

Meanwhile, the true extent of Russian output losses remains unclear, as vessels carrying Moscow’s crude turn off their satellite tracking and Russia looks to further shift its clientele east.



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Messi scandal spotlights Saudi ambitions to turn desert kingdom into tourist Mecca

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Issued on:

Lionel Messi’s promotional trip to Saudi Arabia has kicked up a storm at his Qatari-owned football club Paris Saint-Germain (PSG), while also casting a spotlight on Riyadh’s efforts to showcase its heritage and lure foreign visitors. FRANCE 24 spoke to Gulf analyst Karim Sader about Saudi ambitions to turn the desert kingdom into a tourism hotspot. 

Messi, who recently lifted the World Cup trophy in Qatar, was suspended by the Parisian club this week after failing to show up for a training session just days after the French league leaders slumped to their latest, humiliating home defeat. 

Instead of trading passes with the likes of Neymar and Kylian Mbappé, the Argentinian football hero was in Saudi Arabia, a falcon perched on his arm, watching a palm-weaving demonstration and touring the Arabian Horse Museum as part of a lucrative commercial deal to promote tourism in the oil-rich nation. 

The ensuing row, which looks set to precipitate the end of Messi’s unhappy two-year spell at PSG, has exposed the competition between Gulf states eager to become major players in the money-making world of football. It has also brought to the fore Riyadh’s ambitions to become a magnet for foreign visitors. 


Tourism is indeed a pillar of “Vision 2030”, an ambitious plan to modernise and diversify the Saudi economy and reduce its dependence on oil, which Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman – known as MBS – unveiled in 2016. The aim is to turn this oil kingdom with a dubious human rights record into a high-end tourist destination.  

Home to Islam’s two holiest sites, Mecca and Medina, as well as six UNESCO World Heritage sites, Saudi Arabia has primarily attracted Muslim pilgrims so far. In MBS’s vision, the objective is to welcome some 30 million international visitors by 2030 and generate up to a million jobs in tourism. 

FRANCE 24 spoke to political analyst Karim Sader, a specialist in the Gulf region, about the crown prince’s plans to turn Saudi Arabia into a Mecca for foreign visitors, and the limits to his ambitions.  

FRANCE 24: The controversy over Messi has cast a spotlight on Riyadh’s ambitions for tourism. Just how important is the industry to MBS’s “Vision 2030”?  

It is clear that Saudi Arabia is sparing no efforts to build an attractive tourism industry. It’s part of the transformation of Saudi society and the desire for international recognition that MBS is pursuing through his Vision 2030 project. The aim is to develop a number of ‘soft power’ instruments, including tourism. Riyadh is trying to follow in the footsteps of its Gulf neighbours, including the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar, which understood early on that securing international recognition meant investing in sectors with a strong media impact, such as sport, tourism and the media itself.  

Of course, the kingdom has a rich historical heritage that has long been overshadowed by the influence of Wahhabism [editor’s note: a hardline form of Sunni Islam practised in Saudi Arabia], including the magnificent site of Hegra, which bears witness to the Nabataean civilisation. But it still has a lot of work to do to build the image of a tourist destination, logistically and socially speaking. 

That is why MBS is spending lavishly to attract both industry specialists and global stars like Lionel Messi who can serve as a luxury showcase for the country. The same strategy has been deployed in sports with the spectacular signing of another football superstar, Cristiano Ronaldo [who joined Saudi club Al Nassr last December]. It proved to be a resounding PR coup for the Saudi league, which hardly anyone in the West was familiar with.  


THE DEBATE © FRANCE 24

 

In late March, Saudi authorities invited several French musicians, including former first lady Carla Bruni, to give a concert near the remains of the ancient desert city of Al-Ula – a revolutionary step in itself, since we’re talking about a pre-Islamic site. Promoting this type of landmark would have been unthinkable at the height of Wahhabi influence in Saudi Arabia. It’s quite a paradox that the crown prince should be leading this revolution. 

Saudi Arabia has set itself a target of creating 200 museums and organising 400 annual events to attract 30 million foreign visitors by 2030. Is this ambitious goal reachable? 

As always, the crown prince wants to move fast and hit hard – it’s both his strength and his flaw. MBS is in the process of revolutionising Saudi society and giving this sclerotic conservative kingdom a dynamism that would be the envy of the UAE, a country whose development model has long fascinated him. It’s not just a matter of spending lavishly. In his mind, it is also necessary to ensure investments are profitable by designing a technology-based tourism, betting on the construction of ‘smart’ cities that will attract investors.  

The Saudi public will need to be prepared to welcome foreign visitors and manage tourist sites. Some planned sites involve displacing local communities that have been there for many generations, which could lead to protests and security issues. One example is Neom, the futuristic city MBS plans to build in the middle of the desert. So far, the mega-project is a failure and is causing tensions, despite having cost a lot of money and allowed designers, architects and consultants to make a small fortune. In my view, Neom shows the limits of MBS’s ambitions, which could turn against him.  

To attract tourists, Saudi Arabia needs to foster a peaceful climate in the wider region. Could this be a factor behind Riyadh’s current proactive stance on the diplomatic stage? 

The development of tourism is part of MBS’s “Saudi First” strategy, which aims to guarantee the stability of the kingdom in a pacified regional context, both in terms of security and the economy – and whatever the cost in terms of alliances. Riyadh has freed itself from its traditional alliances and now leads an extremely supple diplomacy. This allows it to engage in a rapprochement with [arch-rival] Iran and China while also preserving its partnership with the United States. Diplomatically, as well as economically, the Saudis are now investing in a pragmatic way. The days of careless spending are over; the cliché no longer holds. 

This article was translated from the original in French.



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Saudi Arabia could host peace talks with warring parties from Sudan

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There are hopes that the two sides in the Sudan crisis could meet for peace talks in Saudi Arabia. However, there have also been warnings that fighting could break out again with very little warning.

Sudan’s warring generals have agreed to send representatives for negotiations, potentially in Saudi Arabia, the United Nations’ top official in the country told The Associated Press on Monday, even as the two sides clashed in the capital despite another three-day extension of a fragile cease-fire.

If the talks come together, they would initially focus on establishing a “stable and reliable” cease-fire monitored by national and international observers, Volker Perthes said, but he warned there were still challenges in holding the negotiations. A string of temporary truces over the past week has eased fighting only in some areas, but in others, fierce battles have continued to drive civilians from their homes and push the country into disaster.

Humanitarian aid

Humanitarian groups have been trying to restore the flow of help to a country where nearly a third of the population of 46 million relied on international aid even before the explosion of violence. The UN food agency on Monday said it was ending the temporary suspension of its operations in Sudan, put in place after three of its team members were killed in the war-wrecked Darfur region early in the fighting.

The World Food Program will resume food distribution in four provinces — al-Qadaref, Gezira, Kassala and White Nile — working in areas where security permits, said Executive Director Cindy McCain said in a statement. The numbers of those in need of help will “grow significantly as fighting continues,” she said. “To best protect our necessary humanitarian workers and the people of Sudan, the fighting must stop.”

A day earlier, the International Committee of the Red Cross flew in a planeload of medical supplies to bring some relief to hospitals overwhelmed by the mayhem.

The United States conducted its first evacuation of American civilians from Sudan. Watched over by US military drones, a group of Americans made the perilous journey by road from the capital, Khartoum, to the Red Sea city of Port Sudan. On Monday, a US Navy fast transport ship took 308 evacuees from Port Sudan to the Saudi port of Jeddah, according to Saudi officials.

Direct talks, if they take place, would be the first major sign of progress since fighting erupted on April 15 between the army and a rival paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces. For much of the conflict, army chief Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan and RSF commander Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo have appeared determined to fight to the end.

Their struggle for power has put millions of Sudanese in the middle of gun battles, artillery bombardments and airstrikes. Around 530 people, including civilians and combatants, have been killed in the conflict, with another 4,500 wounded, the Sudanese Health Ministry said. Tens of thousands have fled Khartoum and other cities, and more than two-thirds of hospitals in areas with active fighting are out of service, with fighters looting the dwindling supplies.

Explosions in Khartoum

Explosions and gunfire echoed in parts of Khartoum and its neighbouring city, Omdurman, on Monday, residents said, hours after the two sides committed to the 72-hour cease-fire extension.

Atiya Abdalla Atiya, Secretary of the Doctors’ Syndicate, said the fighting raged early Monday in different areas in the capital, including the military’s headquarters, the Republican Palace, and the international airport. There were also clashes in the upscale neighbourhood of Kafouri, he said.

Many hospitals in the capital remained out of service or inaccessible because of the fighting, while others have been occupied by the warring factions, particularly the RSF, he said.

The United States and Saudi Arabia have led an international push to get the generals to stop fighting, then engage in deeper negotiations to resolve the crisis.

Speaking from Port Sudan, the UN envoy Perthes said they still face daunting challenges in getting the two sides to abide by a real halt in fighting where violations are prevented. One possibility was to establish a monitoring mechanism that includes Sudanese and foreign observers, “but that has to be negotiated,” he said.

Extending the cease-fire

Talks on entrenching the cease-fire could take place in either Saudi Arabia or South Sudan, he said, adding that the former may be easier logistically since it has close ties to both sides.

But even arranging talks in Saudi Arabia has challenges, he said, since each side needs safe passage through territory of the other to reach talks. “That is very difficult in a situation where there is a lack of trust,” he said.

The eruption of fighting capped months of worsening disputes between Burhan and Dagalo as the international community tried to work out a deal for establishing civilian rule.

“We all saw the enormous tensions,” Perthes said. “But very concretely, we have to say that our efforts to de-escalate did not succeed.” He said he had been warning repeatedly that “any single spark” could cause the power struggle to explode.

Perthes warned of a “major humanitarian crisis” as people were running out of food and fresh water in Khartoum and fighting damaged water systems.

A real cease-fire is vital to getting access to residents who are trapped in their homes or injured, he said. “If we don’t get a stable cease-fire, then it means that the humanitarian situation will be even worse.”

He also warned the fighting could pull in other armed factions in a country where multiple groups have fought several civil wars over the past decade. “And that could transform into a broader confrontation between different groups and communities and militias in the country,” he said. 

More than 500 people have been killed in the fighting, with many foreign nationals and Sudanese people fleeing the country. It is reported that 20,000 have sought refuge in neighbouring Chad.

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‘Bring me his head’: The frightening Twitter hunt for a Saudi dissident in exile

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When a former colonel in the Saudi police force, now seeking asylum in the United Kingdom, took to TikTok in mid-March to explain live why he had left the police, internet vigilantes immediately put a price on his head. In the time since, a horde of Twitter accounts has been harassing the 44-year-old online, calling him a “traitor” and “doxxing” him, revealing information about his whereabouts. He says he now fears for his life.

“The threats are coming from all angles: TikTok, YouTube, Twitter… They want to kill me before I get political asylum in the United Kingdom,” Rabih Alenezi, a former colonel with the Saudi police, told the FRANCE 24 Observers team by telephone. 

Alenezi is living in a constant state of fear in a location that he has managed, for the time being, to keep secret. His terror has become more acute since a mysterious Twitter account offered 10,000 Saudi riyals (around €2,400) to anyone who had information on his whereabouts. 


Rabih Alenezi Published This Video On His Twitter Account On March 7, 2023, Announcing His Decision To Leave The Saudi Police. Since Then, His Account Has Been Pirated And All Of The Content Removed. The Video Has Since Been Republished By The Media Outlet Middle East Eye.

I got to the United Kingdom in February. It wasn’t my original plan to stay in the UK and live here. However, I was already shocked by the human rights situation in Saudi Arabia.

Two weeks after my arrival in the UK, I published a video where I spoke about the reasons that I was leaving the security forces. I resigned mid-broadcast. I immediately got a wave of online harassment, but I said, what the hell, I can keep doing my videos. 

NOTE: Since the publication of this article in French on April 7, 2023, the Twitter account at the origin of the harassment of Alenezi, “Fahad Bin Sattam” (@fahadnoic), has been deleted. 

A manhunt unfolds on Twitter

On March 17, Rabih Alenezi’s Twitter account was hacked. His tweets criticizing the regime were erased and, in their place, the account was flooded with photos of Mohamed Bin Salman, the crown prince of the Saudi kingdom.  

On March 17, Rabih Alenezi’s Twitter account was hacked. His tweets criticising the regime were erased and, in their place, the account was flooded with photos of Mohamed Bin Salman, the crown prince of the Saudi kingdom. 

The nightmare really began for Rabih Alenezi on March 22. That day, he went to a restaurant in central London and started a live stream on TikTok. Among the 5,000 people following him, the Twitter account “Fahad Bin Sattam” (@fahadnoic – since deleted) boasted that he had been able to locate the former colonel’s position and tweeted to his followers: “I’m live. Give me a few minutes, I’ll get him kicked out of the cafe.”

In this video, which Rabih Alenezi streamed live on TikTok on March 22, 2023, you can hear the restaurant manager asking him to stop filming. The manager says that people have called the restaurant to complain about Alenezi’s comments and that “The restaurant doesn’t want to be associated with political topics”. © Observers

About 45 minutes into the live stream, a waiter interrupts Alenezi to tell him that the restaurant has received complaints and asks him to stop the broadcast. In an excerpt from the video, the restaurant manager is heard explaining that the restaurant had received calls from people complaining about this “kind of political speech”. Alenezi then stops his live broadcast.

On Twitter, “Fahad Bin Sattam” confirmed that he had called the restaurant several times to “denounce” his compatriot. He tweeted an excerpt from Alenezi’s TikTok live stream, addressing the former colonel directly: “I will always be after you… This time it was a restaurant, but next time it will be your home.”

Bin Sattam’s followers commended him for his “patriotic efforts”. One of them wrote: “Traitors, and especially those who are military, deserve the edge of the sword.”

In a video filmed in the street on March 23, Rabih Alenezi talks about the restaurant incident. 

On March 23, Alenezi started streaming from another café in London. “Fahad Bin Sattam” doxxed Alenezi again – determining the location were he was filming. However, by that time, Alenezi had left the café. 

On March 27, “Fahad Bin Sattam” posted a Tweet offering 10,000 Saudi riyals (€2,400) to “anyone who had information about this individual, with the following information: he is renting a studio in London, probably in Kensington”. He added images of the inside of the apartment where the former colonel was staying, taken from his TikTok videos. 

On March 27, “Fahad Bin Sattam” posted a sort of wanted ad online, offering 10,000 Saudi riyals (2,400 euros) to anyone with information about the former colonel.
On March 27, “Fahad Bin Sattam” posted a sort of wanted ad online, offering 10,000 Saudi riyals (2,400 euros) to anyone with information about the former colonel. © Observers

Three days later, the account told its followers to focus on trying to find the property where Alenezi was staying on British housing sites Zoopla Property or OnTheMarket. He said he’d offer 5,000 riyals (€1,200) extra to “the first person to find him before me”. 

Hundreds of Saudi accounts participate in the manhunt

Hundreds of tweets praised “Fahad Bin Sattam” for what he was doing. 

“Brother Sattam, please accept an additional 1,000 riyals (€200) from me to add to the 10,000 riyals (€2,400) you’re already offering,” one tweet offered. 

“His body language betrays his terror. He is feeling his neck, which will be separated from his body,” another account tweeted.

At the urging of the “Fahan Bin Sattam” account, many followers joined Alenezi’s live streams on TikTok, filling the comments sections with threats and insults. “Sattam” then published screengrabs of the insults on Twitter. 

“He blocked me, that b*****d! I really pissed him off with my comments: he didn’t want to read the truth,” said one social media user of Alenezi. 

Others were busy doxxing Alenezi, sharing the coordinates of his possible locations.

Another social media user suggested this possible location for the dissident, using the results of a search on a British housing site.
Another social media user suggested this possible location for the dissident, using the results of a search on a British housing site. © Observers

No action from Twitter, despite multiple reports

A number of social media users, defending Alenezi’s right to freedom of expression, said that they reported “Fahad Bin Sattam’s” threatening messages to Twitter, arguing that he was inciting violence and hate. 

On March 28, “Fahad Bin Sattam” revealed that someone in Germany had reported his tweet offering the 10,000 riyal (€2,400) reward, but that Twitter had decided that the tweet didn’t violate Twitter rules or German law. 


Our team contacted Twitter’s security services several times for comment. However, the only response we got was the “poop” emoji, which Elon Musk announced on March 19 would be the automatic response to press requests.

‘Any minute, I fear that a masked man will appear at my door to kill me’

Rabih Alenezi continued: 

Right now, I am doing my best to limit contact with strangers, especially any Arabs. I don’t go to the mosque, I’m really anxious. 

When the “Fahad Bin Sattam” account located the hotel where I was staying on March 27, I changed my address immediately. Then he found the street where I was staying and I left again, shortly after his tweet. 

I’m afraid that, at any moment, a masked man will come to my door and kill me. 

I was passing by a café when a man yelled out “traitor!” in Arabic. I’m sure that he was talking about me.

They [the trolls] became terrified after my posts, as if I was an imminent danger to the Kingdom, but all I did was talk about my experience [in the police] and express my opinion.

They say I am a coward and a traitor. They demand: “Bring me his head”.

As a rule, no one dares to publicly threaten a colonel without the consent or direct order of the Saudi authorities, at the risk of being arrested and thrown in jail… Which leads me to believe that this Twitter account is supported by the regime. 

‘I have witnessed police raids on civilians’ homes at night, I have seen police officers dragging a woman out of her home in the middle of the night’

In Saudi Arabia, a tweet criticising the regime can land you in prison. You can get up to 30 years in prison for criticising a ministry or even a law. The Saudi regime is no longer afraid of international condemnation. We saw this with the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi or the conviction of Saad Ibrahim Almadi for a few tweets criticising the regime [Editor’s note: sentenced to 19 years in prison when visiting family in Riyadh, Almadi, a Saudi-American, was released in March 2023, but is banned from travelling], and they were both living abroad.

In April 2022, I was assigned to spy on Shiite worshippers during the month of Ramadan in Al Qatif, in the east of the country. The regime wanted to stir up public opinion against these Shiite tribes who were demanding their rights. But I used a family holiday as an excuse not to go. In 2020, I also managed to get out of another mission to repress demonstrations in Tabuk, in the northwest [due to tensions between local tribes and the authorities over a controversial urban expansion project]. I said I was sick, so I didn’t have to participate.

I have witnessed police raids on civilians’ homes at night, I have seen police officers dragging a woman out of her home in the middle of the night… In prisons, you hear the screams of tortured prisoners, of people being raped. What comes out in the media is only a fraction of the human rights violations in Saudi Arabia.

Alenezi says he has no police protection in the UK. He has applied for asylum in the UK, the United States and Canada, which he hopes will help bring him a sense of safety.

The FRANCE 24 Observers team was able to confirm with the London police that a complaint had been filed regarding the threats toward Alenezi. An investigation was still ongoing as of March 31. 

We also reached out to the Saudi embassy in the UK which did not respond to our requests.

Who is behind the threatening account?

The FRANCE 24 Observers team looked into the Twitter account that launched this manhunt, which also tweets about other Saudi dissidents living abroad. 

The account was created in December 2021, but has no record of any activity before December 24, 2022. The account has not used any other username since it was created, according to our research.

When it first began, the account mainly posted about local and international football, but later deleted many of these tweets. 

In his bio, “Fahad Bin Sattam” said he was interested in “Saudi passion and identity” and listed an email address as a way to contact him about “any information on the Saudi opposition”. Followed by more than 34,000 subscribers, the account followed 713 people, mostly opponents of the Saudi regime, political asylum seekers and Arabic-speaking journalists.

A ‘digital army’ indirectly run by the regime

Abdullah Alaoudh is the Saudi head of the Washington DC-based NGO The Freedom Initiative. He lobbies the US Congress for the protection of Saudi dissidents abroad and raises awareness of the risks faced by Saudi political refugees.

Alaoudh posted about Alenezi’s case, prompting a number of replies from accounts mocking his outrage. One reply even included an edited photo depicting the Saudi crown prince with his foot on the heads of both men and the words, “Crush their faces into the ground. Slit their necks with your cleaver”.

For Alaoudh, these kind of threats against the exiled police officer are all part of a Saudi strategy that puts online pressure on those the regime designates as opponents. In 2018, a New York Times investigation revealed the extent of the regime’s efforts to silence its critics, using troll factories and spies working at Twitter.

The phenomenon of “digital armies” serving oppressive regimes is not new, but Mohammad bin Salman is using this tactic to occupy all the space for expression of his fellow citizens. The internet was a kind of informal Saudi parliament that we never had, and MBS is seeking to invade this space of virtual freedom. 

Digital armies are used to promote the regime, terrorise and harass opponents, and play on the social networking algorithm to change the narratives in Saudi Arabia. They appear to have bots that detect keywords, such as the initials “MBS” or “Vision 2030” [Editor’s note: a global project launched by the kingdom to expand Saudi investments abroad].

These “cyber warriors” typically target Saudi dissidents like me living abroad. As a test, I tweeted a few Qur’anic verses that had no  political overtones, but I was still inundated with hateful comments. The aim of these attacks is to provoke the victim and sully their image with their Saudi audience.

For example, these accounts will flood critical tweets with pro-regime hashtags or tweets glorifying the crown prince.

This “Fahad Bin Sattam” openly says “hunt down all traitors”. This is transcontinental oppression. We have reported several troll accounts en masse to Twitter, with no meaningful response. 

We have also officially reported these incidents of harassment to authorities in Canada, the US and the UK, where most Saudi refugees and asylum seekers are located. These countries do not want to be the scene of extrajudicial exactions.



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Credit Suisse to borrow almost $54 billion from central bank after shares plunge

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Swiss bank Credit Suisse said Thursday it will move to shore up its finances, borrowing up to $54 billion from the central bank after its shares plunged, dragging down other major European lenders in the wake of bank failures in the United States.

Credit Suisse said would exercise an option to borrow up to 50 billion francs ($53.7 billion) from the central bank.

“This additional liquidity would support Credit Suisse’s core businesses and clients as Credit Suisse takes the necessary steps to create a simpler and more focused bank built around client needs,” the bank said.

Fanning new fears about the health of financial institutions following the recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank in the US, at one point, Credit Suisse shares lost more than a quarter of their value on Wednesday.

The share price hit a record low after the bank’s biggest shareholder — the Saudi National Bank — told news outlets that it would not put more money into the Swiss lender, which was beset by problems long before the US banks collapsed. The Saudi bank is seeking to avoid regulations that kick in with a stake above 10%, having invested some 1.5 billion Swiss francs to acquire a holding just under that threshold.

The turmoil prompted an automatic pause in trading of Credit Suisse shares on the Swiss market and sent shares of other European banks tumbling, some by double digits.

Speaking Wednesday at a financial conference in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, Credit Suisse Chairman Axel Lehmann defended the bank, saying, “We already took the medicine” to reduce risks.

When asked if he would rule out government assistance in the future, he said: “That’s not a topic. … We are regulated. We have strong capital ratios, very strong balance sheet. We are all hands on deck, so that’s not a topic whatsoever.”

Switzerland’s central bank announced late Wednesday that it was prepared to act, saying it would support Credit Suisse if needed. A statement from the bank did not specify whether the support would come in the form of cash or loans or other assistance. The regulators said they believed the bank had enough money to meet its obligations.

A day earlier, Credit Suisse reported that managers had identified “material weaknesses” in the bank’s internal controls on financial reporting as of the end of last year. That fanned new doubts about the bank’s ability to weather the storm.

Credit Suisse stock dropped about 30%, to about 1.6 Swiss francs ($1.73), before clawing back to a 24% loss at 1.70 francs ($1.83) at the close of trading on the SIX stock exchange. At its lowest, the price was down more than 85% from February 2021.

After the joint announcement from the Swiss National Bank and the Swiss financial markets regulator, the shares also made up some ground on Wall Street.

The stock has suffered a long, sustained decline: In 2007, the bank’s shares traded at more than 80 francs ($86.71) each.

With concerns about the possibility of more hidden trouble in the banking system, investors were quick to sell bank stocks.

France’s Societe Generale SA dropped 12% at one point. France’s BNP Paribas fell more than 10%. Germany’s Deutsche Bank tumbled 8%, and Britain’s Barclays Bank was down nearly 8%. Trading in the two French banks was briefly suspended.

The STOXX Banks index of 21 leading European lenders sagged 8.4% following relative calm in the markets Tuesday.

Shares in US markets were mixed on Wednesday, with the Nasdaq composite edging 0.1% higher while the S&P 500 dropped 0.7%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended 0.9% lower after logging bigger losses early in the session.

Japanese banks resumed their downtrend, with Resona Holdings, the nation’s No. 5 bank, falling 5% while other major banks fell more than 3%.

The turbulence came a day ahead of a meeting by the European Central Bank. President Christine Lagarde said last week, before the US failures, that the bank would “very likely” increase interest rates by a half percentage point to fight against inflation. Markets were watching closely to see if the bank carries through despite the latest turmoil.

Credit Suisse is “a much bigger concern for the global economy” than the midsize US banks that collapsed, said Andrew Kenningham, chief Europe economist for Capital Economics.

It has multiple subsidiaries outside Switzerland and handles trading for hedge funds.

“Credit Suisse is not just a Swiss problem but a global one,” he said.

He noted, however, that the bank’s “problems were well known so do not come as a complete shock to either investors or policymakers.”

The troubles “once more raise the question about whether this is the beginning of a global crisis or just another ‘idiosyncratic’ case,” Kenningham said in a note. ”Credit Suisse was widely seen as the weakest link among Europe’s large banks, but it is not the only bank which has struggled with weak profitability in recent years.”

Leaving a Credit Suisse branch in Geneva, Fady Rachid said he and his wife are worried about the bank’s health. He planned to transfer some money to UBS.

“I find it hard to believe that Credit Suisse is going to be able to get rid of these problems and get through it,” said Rachid, a 56-year-old doctor.

Investors responded to “a broader structural problem” in banking following a long period of low interest rates and “very, very loose monetary policy,” said Sascha Steffen, professor of finance at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management.

In order to earn some yield, banks “needed to take more risks, and some banks did this more prudently than others.”

European finance ministers said this week that their banking system has no direct exposure to the US bank failures.

Europe strengthened its banking safeguards after the global financial crisis that followed the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers in 2008 by transferring supervision of the biggest banks to the central bank, analysts said.

The Credit Suisse parent bank is not part of EU supervision, but it has entities in several European countries that are. Credit Suisse is subject to international rules requiring it to maintain financial buffers against losses as one of 30 so-called globally systemically important banks, or G-SIBs.

The Swiss bank has been pushing to raise money from investors and roll out a new strategy to overcome an array of troubles, including bad bets on hedge funds, repeated shake-ups of its top management and a spying scandal involving Zurich rival UBS.

In an annual report released Tuesday, Credit Suisse said customer deposits fell 41%, or by 159.6 billion francs ($172.1 billion), at the end of last year compared with a year earlier.

(AP)

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Explained | Understanding the Saudi-Iran detente

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Wang Yi, the top Foreign Policy Official of China with Ali Shamkhani, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and Musaad bin Mohammed, the National Security Adviser of Saudi Arabia in Beijing, China on March 10.
| Photo Credit: VIA REUTERS

The story so far: Saudi Arabia and Iran, two of West Asia’s major powers that have been at odds with each other for decades, agreed to restore diplomatic relations last week in an agreement brokered by China. The rivalry between the two dates back to pre-revolution Iran when they competed with each other for regional dominance. After the 1979 revolution brought down the Iranian monarchy and turned the country into a Shia theocratic republic, sectarian and ideological flavours were added to the mix. In recent times, it had turned into a cold war with both sides supporting their proxies across West Asia. Formal ties between them collapsed in 2016 after the Saudi embassy in Tehran was overrun by protesters following Riyadh’s execution of a revered Shia cleric. Now, under China’s mediation, they have agreed to start a new beginning. If peace holds, it could have far-reaching implications for regional security, stability and geopolitics.

What are the terms of the agreement?

Saudi Arabia and Iran started directly talking to each other in 2021 and had held multiple rounds of negotiations thereafter, first in Iraq and then Oman, without any breakthrough. There was, however, a growing realisation on both sides that the diplomatic path should be kept open. In February 2022, a senior Iranian Foreign Ministry official told The Hindu in Tehran’s National Gardens, “The Saudis now realise that they don’t have an alternative to having stable relations with us. It’s too early to say if there will be a breakthrough, but we’re talking.” When China’s President Xi Jinping visited Riyadh last December, he pushed for a rapprochement between the two. In January, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said in Davos, Switzerland, that Riyadh had “reached out [to Iran] and we are trying to find a path to dialogue”, without specifying China’s role. Last week, the reconciliation was announced after days-long secret talks in Beijing.

Finer details of the agreement are yet to be unveiled. But officials on both sides say, according to reports, that Iran has agreed to prevent further attacks against Saudi Arabia, especially those from the Houthi-controlled parts of Yemen (Iran backs Houthis, a Shia militia in Yemen while the Saudis back the government forces). Saudi Arabia, on its part, agreed to rein in Iran International, a Farsi news channel that is critical of the Iranian regime (which the Iranian intelligence has termed a terrorist organisation). The Foreign Ministers of both countries would meet soon to thrash out the terms of the reconciliation before reopening embassies in each other’s capitals in two months. China is also planning to host a cross-Gulf conference of Iran and the six Gulf monarchies (Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman, who make up the Gulf Cooperation Council, or GCC) this year to further strengthen peace in the region.

Why did Saudi Arabia reach out to Iran?

West Asia has been undergoing strategic realignments in recent years. In 2020, the UAE became the first Arab country to normalise relations with Israel in a quarter century. In the following years, Israel and Arab countries deepened their partnerships. In 2021, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and their allies decided to end their failed blockade of Qatar. The U.S. was also trying to broker a normalisation agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel. One of the key drivers of these realignments is the U.S.’s deprioritisation of West Asia. The U.S., the traditional great power in the region, has bigger foreign policy challenges in its hand now such as the Russian war in Ukraine and China’s rise in the Indo-Pacific. America’s allies in the region see the twin realities of a power vacuum created by the U.S.’s deprioritisation and the challenge posed by Iran’s rise. To address these problems, the U.S. wanted to bring the two pillars of its West Asia policy — Israel and the Arab world — together against Iran so that the American alliance system in the region would not be disrupted. While the UAE chose this path through the Abraham Accords, the Saudis decided to go slow on reconciling with Israel, especially since violence kept spreading in Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.

Additionally, relations between Saudi Arabia and the U.S. have been rocky in recent years. The bedrock of the partnership, which goes back to the meeting between King Abdul Aziz bin Saud and President Franklin Roosevelt aboard USS Quincy in 1945 off Egyptian waters, was America’s security guarantees in return for Saudi oil. The U.S. is now one of the top oil producers in the world and is not as dependent on the Gulf Arabs as it used to be during the Cold War. This allowed American Presidents to expedite the U.S.’s deprioritisation of the region. When Saudi oil facilities were attacked in 2019 (for which Iran was widely blamed), the U.S. looked away. This seems to have prompted the Saudis to look for alternative solutions for the Iran problem. The solution they came up with was to reach out to the Iranians.

What led Iran to accept the deal?

Iran is going through one of the toughest phases of economic isolation and domestic pressure. Tehran knows that getting a reprieve from Western sanctions is not a near-term possibility and at home, despite its crackdown, protests refuse to die down. Its economy is deteriorating and its currency, the rial, is struggling. Iran wanted Chinese investments and support for the rial. According to Iranian media reports, China allowed Tehran to withdraw parts of the $20 billion funds that were frozen with Chinese banks (after the U.S. sanctions). So, while struggling with isolation and sanctions, a deal with Saudi Arabia, under China’s mediation, could open economic lifelines for Iran. And strategically, Iran knows that such a deal could complicate American effort to rally Arab countries and Israel against it. So economically and strategically, a reconciliation is beneficial for Tehran, at least in a tactical sense.

What does China gain from the deal?

Unlike the U.S., which has a history of military interventions in West Asia, China comes with a cleaner record. While the U.S.’s ties with Saudi Arabia faced headwinds in recent years and it has hostile ties with Iran, China has warm ties with both — it is a leading buyer of Saudi oil and the largest trading partner of Iran. This allowed China to use its economic leverage to bring the parties closer.

China has economic, regional and strategic interests in playing the role of a peace broker in West Asia. China is the world’s largest oil buyer and stability in the energy market is essential for its continued rise. If a detente between Saudi Arabia and Iran can offer some stability to West Asia in particular and global energy supplies in general, China stands to benefit from it. Regionally, the agreement marks China’s arrival as a major power in West Asia. If one looks at all the major peace initiatives in the region in the post-War world — be it the Camp David agreement (1978), Oslo Accords (1993), the Israel-Jordan Treaty (1994), Middle East Quartet (2002) or the Abraham Accords (2020) — the U.S. was a constant presence. But in the Saudi-Iran reconciliation, the U.S. is absent. This points to larger changes under way in the global order. Besides, China is also trying to send a clear message to countries in the Global South. While the U.S. is busy rallying the Western world to arm Ukraine to push back Russia and weaken Moscow through sanctions, China is quietly brokering peace in the Global South. But this increased role China is playing in West Asia comes with risks. It’s a region prone to conflicts. And the Saudi-Iran rivalry is multilayered — economic, geopolitical and sectarian. If the peace doesn’t hold and old rivals go back to their old ways, it would raise serious questions about both China’s leverage and its capacity for sustaining its big ticket diplomatic initiatives.

How does the U.S. look at the deal?

U.S. officials have welcomed the reconciliation. The public narrative is that peace between two of the major rival powers in West Asia would help stabilise the region and benefit the global energy market, which is good news for everyone. But from a strategic point of view, the U.S. would be facing unpleasant questions about the agreement. The Iran nuclear deal is practically dead. The U.S. wants Saudi Arabia to normalise ties with Israel and put up a joint front against Iran. And even when it is deprioritising the region, the U.S. would not like to lose its influence in West Asia. But now, when it looks at the region, it sees an ally (Saudi Arabia) drifting further away, a rival who it wanted to contain (Iran) making new friends and its global challenger (China) spreading and deepening its influence in a region which the U.S. had dominated since at least the Suez War of 1956.

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