What I believed –>
Jamal Khashoggi, almost royal family given his access, provided as a journalist intelligence for Mohammed Bin Salman. When he departed from the royal line by being positive about the Muslim Brotherhood and progressive about human right in the The Kingdom, the King chose to retrieve him a manner probably impressive even to Putin who forgives no KGB turncoat.
Witnessed: “Political Absolutism”. Unquestionable authority. Capricious, unyielding, sadistic, tyrannical. Add for some: black and white in judgment; inflexible in execution.
More True?
At the time of my brief discussions with him, Khashoggi happened to work for a man at the heart of some of the issues I had been investigating: he was a media aide to Prince Turki al-Faisal, then Saudi ambassador to London, and later Washington, and previously Saudi intelligence chief for 25 years before he abruptly left the post just prior to the 9/11 attacks.
It was Prince Turki as former head of intelligence who brokered the Saudis’ fateful deal with al-Qaida, according to documents and testimony from Taliban insiders cited by Vanity Fair journalists Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan. In their book Eleventh Day (2012), they report that under al-Faisal’s deal, as early as 1995 the Saudi royal family paid ‘protection money’ to Osama bin Laden on condition that he avoided targeting the kingdom.
The NSA was closely monitoring the operation, which saw hundreds of millions of dollars channelled to bin Laden through philanthropic activity.
Ahmed, Nafeez Mosaddeq. “Who really was Jamal Khashoggi?” Le Monde diplomatique, November 20, 2018.
Regarding 9/11, one may wish to keep in mind Moscow’s enshadowed role with Ayman al-Zawahiri — reference: Schindler, John. “Exploring Al Qaeda’s Murky Connection to Russian Intelligence.” Business Insider, June 10, 2014:
That Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s right-hand man and the leader of the global jihad movement since bin Laden’s death in May 2011, spent almost a half-year in the mid-1990s in the custody of Russian intelligence is admitted by both sides and is a matter of public record.[3]
Just as significant, Zawahiri’s Russian sojourn occurred at a pivotal point in the development of al-Qaeda; the shift in strategy, resulting in attacks on the “far enemy” (i.e. the United States), the road leading to 9/11, occurred after Zawahiri’s imprisonment by the Russians.
Spies, of course, both uncover and keep secrets, and there seems no question regarding Khashoggi’s service to the Kingdom as a journalist with extraordinary access to power as well as, apparently (as suggested by Nafeez Ahmed’s coverage) admiration for it. As “dead men tell no tales”, the public may never know the full extent of motivations for Khashoggi’s torture, death, and dismemberment.
In the shadows: every intelligence agency on the planet with eyes keenly fixed on the course of international affairs and hands on levers responding to immense political power in the figures of dictators, kings, and presidents. So The Kingdom may have paid protection for al-Qaeda’s promotion of Islamic inflexibility and viciously anomic inhumanity elsewhere in the world — and Russia may have “handled” Zawahiri as an anti-western force with which to be reckoned as so well demonstrated on 9/11.
So ensues the west’s global war on Islamic terrorism.
Has it been “The West’s” war only?
Talibanicide
For the Ancestors
For the Martyrs
Keep Fighting!
With poppy
With Russian arms and materiel
Keep fighting!
For war crippled children
For war-killed dead
Keep fighting!
For Allah
For Prophet Muhammad
For dogma
For whatever authority says
Keep fighting!
For Russia
For America
For God’s sake
Keep fighting!
Reference
I didn’t know how to treat “Le Monde diplomatique” whose typeset name featured a reversed italic for “diplomatique”, so I bolded the publication’s name — and then what papa does for one . . . . 🙂 No more games. I won’t do it again. I believe italics just fine for book and other whole publication titles.
Ahmed, Nafeez. “Saudi’s new king of terror.” Middle East Eye, June 6, 2016.
Ahmed, Nafeez Mosaddeq. “Who really was Jamal Khashoggi?” Le Monde diplomatique, November 20, 2018.
Al Arabiya English. “Washington Post reveals how Qatar Foundation shaped their pieces by Khashoggi.” December 23, 2018; updated May 20, 2020.
Hearst, David. “Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi criticised the regime — and paid with his life.” Op-ed. The Guardian, October 8, 2018.
Mekhennet, Souad and Greg Miller. “Jamal Khashoggi’s final months as an exile in the long shadow of Saudi Arabia.” The Washington Post, December 22, 2018.
Myre, Greg. “Jamal Khashoggi’s Complicated History With the Saudi Royal Family.” NPR, October 19, 2018.
Schindler, John. “Exploring Al Qaeda’s Murky Connection to Russian Intelligence.” Business Insider, June 10, 2014
Wikipedia. “Ayman al-Zawahiri”.
Wikipedia. “Mohammed bin Salman”.
Wikipedia. “Nafeez Ahmed”.
As the world has waited for further answers about Khashoggi’s death, more details about his background are coming to light. They paint an interesting picture of a man known today in the U.S. as a Washington Post columnist but whose family has deep ties to the Saudi monarchy that go back generations.
“They were a rich family, educated,” said Ali al-Ahmed, a Saudi dissident who runs the Institute for Gulf Affairs in Washington, D.C. He knew Jamal Khashoggi for many years and saw him until recently as more a loyalist than a critic of the royal family.
Myre, Greg. “Jamal Khashoggi’s Complicated History With the Saudi Royal Family.” NPR, October 19, 2018.
–33–
BackChannels 