Doha Forum, Doha, Qatar

15th DEC
SATURDAY
9:00-9:45

Plenary Session Shaping Policy in an Interconnected World
9:45-10:00

Break
10:00-11:00

Plenary Session The Global Order Revisited: Old Actors, New Alliances
11:00-11:30

Plenary Session Newsmaker Interview: Brett McGurk and Vladamir Voronkov

Brett McGurk, U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS
Vladamir Voronkov, U.N. Undersecretary General for Counter Terrorism
Peter Bergen (moderator), Vice President for Global Studies & Fellows, New America Foundation

11:30-12:30

Plenary Session The Growth Potential of Emerging Markets
and the Impact on the Global Economy

H.E. Ali Shareef Al-Emadi, Minister of Finance, Qatar
H.E. Berat Albayrak, Minister of Treasury and Finance, Turkey
Christian Sewing, CEO, Deutsche Bank
Chris Giles (moderator), FT Economics Editor

12:30-14:00

Networking lunch
14:00-15:00

Parallel Session 1 Bit-by-Bit: Enforcing Norms in Cyberspace

Hessa Al-Jaber, Vice Chairperson of Es’hailSat Qatar Satellite Company
Latha Reddy, Co-Chair, Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace
Marietje Schaake, Member of European Parliament, Netherlands
Latha Reddy, Co-Chair, Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace
Karin Von Hippel (moderator), Director-General of the Royal United Services Institute

Parallel Session 2 Identifying a European Role: Navigating Polarization Across the MENA Region

Rt Hon Alistair Burt MP, Minister of State for the Middle East at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office & Minister of State at the Department for International Development
H.E. Sigmar Gabriel, Member of the Bundestag, Former Minister of Foreign Affairs
Mutlaq Al-Qahtani, Special Envoy of the Foreign Minister of the State of Qatar for Counterterrorism and Mediation of Conflict Resolution
Ibrahim Kalin, Special adviser to President Erdogan and the presidential spokesperson
Julien Barnes-Dacey (moderator,) Director, Middle East and North Africa Programme, ECFR

Parallel Session 3 Fact or Falsehood? The Consequences of Misinformation

Michael Rich, President, RAND
Alain Gresh, Editor, OrientXXI
Ahmed Elmagarmid, Executive director, QCRI
Nicholas Enfield, University of Sydney
Steve Clemons (moderator,) Editor-at-Large, The Atlantic

Parallel Session 4 Facilitating Peace in the Sahel: What Are the Alternatives to Militarization?

H.E. Moussa Mara, Former Prime Minister of Mali
Yéro Boly, Former Defense Minister, Burkina Faso
Phillip Carter III, Consultant, The Mead Hill Group, Former US Ambassador to Ivory Coast
Rinaldo Depagne (moderator,) West Africa Project Director, ICG

15:00-15:15

Break
15:15-15:45

Plenary Session Newsmaker Interview: Mohammad Javad Zarif

Mohammad Javad Zarif, Foreign Minister, Iran
Robin Wright (moderator), Writer, The New Yorker

15:45-16:15

Plenary Session: Newsmaker Interview: Achim Steiner and Vaira Vīķe-Freiberg

Achim Steiner, Administrator, United Nations Development Programme
Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga, President of the Club de Madrid and former President of Latvia
Ghida Fakhry (moderator), Current affairs presenter, TRT World

16:15-17:15

Plenary Session The Targeting and Demonization of Journalists and News Outlets: What Should Be Done?

Maria Ressa, Executive Editor, Rappler
David Schlesinger, Committee to Protect Journalists, Member, Board of Directors, Former Reuters Editor-in-Chief
Sean Spicer, Former White House Spokesman
Peter Dobbie (moderator), Al Jazeera English anchor

17:15-17:30

Closing Remarks
18:30-22:00

Dinner
16th DEC
SUNDAY
9:00-10:00

Plenary Session Prospects for International Trade and Investment

H.E. Ali Bin Ahmed Al-Kuwari, Qatar’s Minister of Commerce and Industry
Volker Treier, Member of the Bundestag
Stephane Garelli, Professor Emeritus of World Competitiveness at IMD & Professor at the University of Lausanne
John Defterios (moderator), CNN Emerging Markets Editor/Anchor

10:00-10:30

Plenary Session Newsmaker Interview: 2018 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Nadia Murad

Nadia Murad, 2018 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
Rawaa Augé (moderator), Al Jazeera Arabic presenter

10:30-10:45

Break
10:45-11:45

Parallel Session 1 Struggling for “Justice”: Palestine, Syria and Yemen

Baraa Shiban, Member of Transitional Justice Working Group at the Yemeni National Dialogue Conference
Staffan de Mistura, UN Special Envoy to Syria
Fadel Abdul Ghany, Chairman of the Syrian Network for Human Rights
Ata Hindi, PhD Candidate, Tilburg University
Noha Aboueldahab (moderator), Brookings Doha

Parallel Session 2 Water Sustainability and Food Security: Addressing the Crisis in Waiting

H.E Pablo Campana, Minister of Trade, Ecuador
Bader Al Dafa, Executive Director, Global Dryland Alliance
Djimé Adoum, Executive Secretary, Permanent Committee for Drought in the Sahel
Miguel Cuyaube, Future U.N. High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations
Dareen Abughaida (moderator,) Presenter, Al Jazeera English

Parallel Session 3 Asian Connectivity Conundrums: From Trade Routes to Trade Strategy

Mohamad Maliki, Senior Minister of State (Defense and Foreign Affairs), Singapore
Manish Tewari, Former Union Minister of State, Minister of Information and Broadcasting, India
Theresa Fallon, Director, Center for Russia Europe Asia Studies, Belgium
Lu Miao, Secretary General of Center for China and Globalization
Samir Saran (moderator,) President, ORF

Parallel Session 4 Russia’s Evolving Global Role

Andrey Kortunov, Director-General, Russian Affairs Council
Fahd Al-Attiyah, Qatar’s Ambassador to Russia
Vitaly Naumkin, Director, Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences
Paul Saunders, Executive Director, Center for National Interest
Timofei Bordachev (moderator,) Programme Director of the Valdai Discussion Club

11:45-13:15

Lunch
13:15-13:45

Plenary Session Newsmaker Interview: Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu

Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, Foreign Minister, Turkey

13:45-14:45

Plenary Session New Age Energy Policy: A Balancing Act

H.E. Mr. Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi, Minister of State for Energy Affairs, President & CEO of Qatar Petroleum
Yury Sentyurin, Secretary-General, GECF
Claudio Descalzi, CEO, ENI
Dmitry Zhdannikov (moderator), Editor in Charge, Energy, EMEA, Thomson Reuters

14:45-15:15

Plenary Session Newsmaker Interview: Saeb Erakat

Saeb Erakat, Chief Palestinian Negotiator
Steve Clemons (moderator), Editor-at-Large, The Atlantic

15:15-15:30

Break
15:30-16:30

Parallel Session 1 Gender and Mediation: The Role of Women in Conflict Resolution

Delia Albert, Philippines Former Foreign Secretary
H.E. Ivonne A-Baki, Ambassador of Ecuador to Qatar
Ann Phillips, Senior Advisor, U.S. Institute of Peace
Meenakshi Gopinath, Director, Women in Security Conflict Management and Peace
Mely Anthony (moderator), Head of Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies, RSIS

Parallel Session 2 Countering Violent Extremism: Recruitment, Rhetoric and Radicalization

Anne Speckhard, Director, ICSVE
Peter Bergen, Vice President for Global Studies & Fellows, New American Foundation
Elisabeth Kendall, Senior Research Fellow, Arabic and Islamic Studies, Oxford University
Omar Mulbocus, UK Prevent Counselor
Alberto Fernandez (moderator), President, Middle East Broadcasting

Parallel Session 3 Changing Societies: The Rise of Populist Movements and their Impact on National Values, Identities, and Policies

Abdelwahab El-Affendi, Dean of the School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Professor of Politics, Doha Institute for Graduate Studies
John Esposito, Professor, Religion and International Affairs, Georgetown University
Hamid Dabashi, Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York City
Terri Givens, Political Scientist
Dana El-Kurd (moderator), Researcher, The Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies

Parallel Session 4 The Geopolitics of Natural Resources: New Energy Routes and the Future of Energy Security?

Kristian Ulrichsen, Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy & Associate Fellow, Chatham House
Mahjoob Zweiri, Director of Gulf Studies Center at Qatar University
Mikhail Krutikhin, Partner and Energy Analyst at RusEnergy
Majed Al-Ansari (moderator), Manager of Policy at QU Social and Economic Survey Research Institute

16:30-16:45

Break
16:45-17:45

Plenary Session How Can the International Community Best Serve Those Most in Need?

Henrietta H. Fore, Executive Director, UNICEF
Mark Lowcock, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator
Robert Malley (moderator), President and CEO, International Crisis Group

17:45-18:15

Keynote Address H.E. Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General, UN
18:15-18:30

Closing Remarks
20:00-21:30

Networking dinner

Doha Forum is a global platform for dialogue, bringing together leaders in policy to build innovative and action driven networks.
Mission

Established in 2000, the Doha Forum is a platform for global dialogue on critical challenges facing our world. The Doha Forum promotes the interchange of ideas, discourse, policy making, and action oriented recommendations. In a world where borders are porous, our challenges and solutions are also interlinked.
Doha Forum 2018

Advancements in every sector have reshaped the world and made it more interconnected and globalized than ever before. The butterfly effect, resulting from such unique interconnectedness, requires that we think outside the box of modern and applicable policies to deal with the growing challenges that threaten us all. We now live in a world where nation states and their domestic policies affect other nations, where seemingly unrelated foreign policy of nations affect citizens of the world. Today, states and non-state actors play an equally important role in politics and policies.

The world is living through a period of rapid changes, with potentially enormous implications globally. Great power rivalries are resurgent. Regional powers are increasingly struggling for influence in their neighborhoods and beyond. International institutions and norms are under siege. The world more interconnected than it has ever been, but is also fragmented?

This year, in its eighteenth edition, the Doha Forum will serve as a platform to discuss the “Shaping Policy in an Interconnected World” and focus on four essential themes:

Security
Peace and Mediation
Economic Development
Trends and Transitions

Shaping Policy in an Interconnected World

Different countries have had varied reactions to ongoing conflicts. Some countries have receded their international presence and started looking towards domestic concerns and some nations have created global roles for themselves. As major powers compete or look inwards, increasingly forceful regional powers jockey for geostrategic advantage. International law and customary norms have lost traction; many conflicts today see grave violations of the laws of war.

All this brings new complexity to crisis management. Indeed, warzones across the world have become a principal arena for geopolitical struggles. Most wars today are intra-state but involve outside powers – not just neighbours or major powers, as was the case in the past, but an array of others too. What does ending a war look like when those involved view it mostly through the lens of interests elsewhere?

The Doha Forum would examine what these trends mean for conflict prevention and resolution. Security; is a complex but necessary matter. We will explore traditional and non-traditional ways of security. Cybersecurity is being used by countries and non-state actors; expensive wars resource consuming cyber wars are being waged. Wars that are not tangible, have no rules and rarely have any winners. At the Doha Forum we will be discussing the cybersecurity, its future and how we work together as nations.

In terms of food security, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO), more than 800 million people in today’s world are undernourished. This alarming number requires that we act fast to solve this epidemic. Food security is a growing challenge to most countries located on dryland areas. Drylands are home to nearly 2 billion people and cover 40 percent of the world’s land surface. These global challenges can only be resolved by coalitions of countries working together to provide for each other.

In the most traditional manner; defense and defense spending is always a priority for nation states; this challenge is convoluted; nations buy weapons to prevent war but also to be prepared for war; this delicate balance is tested every day. Are security coalitions still relevant? How can we work together to ensure nations are held accountable for their actions but are also able to protect themselves? This paradigm makes it so that there are nations and peoples struggling for justice while at the same time
economies of war are being stimulated. Economic sanctions are a tool for states to pressure their adversaries, but are they effective or obsolete?

The world’s shifting power dynamics indicate that we will inevitably need new policies to achieve peace and security in the international order. As evident in wars that we have witnessed the last few years, peace and mediation have become complex schemes of interests and long-term global implications. How can countries come together and build an incentive structure for long-lasting peace amongst nations? How can international law and international communities support peace and mediation?
Economic development has seen unprecedented growth. GDP of countries has increased and standards of living have improved. Countries are investing into new markets and alternative energy sources. When we talk about economic development we now need to include foreign investment funds and international coalitions as the European Union, OPEC, and new competitive
markets such as Africa.

We must not lose sight of the progress interconnectedness has brought to our world. The global crime rate, world hunger and disease related deaths are at their lowest. This is not a coincidence, world leaders have worked together to ensure a sustainable world. Leaders have enacted smart, forward-looking policies. While the improvements are great, so are the challenges. We now live in a world with changing societies and dynamics, countries are facing challenges with a seemingly eruption of ideologies from liberalism to conservatism. Interests group and ideology across nations are also more potent in a world where information or misinformation is now widespread. Does that make us interconnected or fragmented?

We must learn from the best practices of our world and scale to the next level. Education, innovation and collaboration should be at the heart of our work as we face our common challenges together. Most importantly, fair and relevant policies that guide and govern our work must be adapted and respected by all. The narrative of the modern world has proved that acting collectively is the only way we can address and solve our challenges.

The 2018 Doha Forum brings together political figures, thought leaders, governmental agencies, and civic society organizations with the aim of facilitating dialogue about how conscious policymaking can guide us to our global tomorrow. The forum addresses today’s urgent issues and ways the international community can come together to solve them. The forum also highlights the modern success models and discusses how we can expand on them and replicate them. Through active and
responsible global leadership, our possibilities are limitless.
Previous Editions
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Doha Forum 2005

“ Our aspirations and goals are for this forum to be more than a platform for dialogue and consultation, but also a tribune for enlightened thinkers to present proposals and solutions that could be converted into concrete plans, policies and programs for the benefit of Humanity.” – Deputy Prime Minister &
Minister of Foreign Affairs, HE Sheikh / Hamad Bin Jassim Bin Jabr Al Thani.
Doha Forum 2006

“ I commend the State of Qatar and His Highness the Emir of the State of Qatar for organizing this important gathering, whose continuation has made it a beacon of hope for the entire region of the Middle East.” – Vice-Minister for foreign affairs of Japan, Professor Akiko Yamanaka.
Doha Forum 2007

“ I would like to pay tribute to His Highness, Emir Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani. His leadership has opened new avenues for political participation in his country. Qatar is a fitting host for this important international forum.” – Secretary-General United Nations, Ban Ki-moon.
Doha Forum 2008

“ I welcome you all to the Doha Forum on Democracy, Development and Free Trade in its 8th Session. Undoubtedly, this high level participation in this Forum is a sign of progress and an added value to the importance of the effective role it plays in the service of political, economic and social development programs.” – Amir of the State of Qatar, His Highness Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani.
Doha Forum 2009

“ My conviction is also that it is pointless to talk of democracy without understanding how different cultures, different languages, can also be respected and transmitted. ”-Former French president, JACQUES CHIRAC.
Doha Forum 2010

“ So, our common challenges are becoming more and more multi-dimensional and global. This means that our cooperation must also be global. Therefore, from the different G’s the most important “G” is the G-192 – the United Nations.” – President of Finland, TARJA HALONEN.
Doha Forum 2011

“ Let me start by expressing my appreciation of the role Qatar is playing in bringing ideas, interests and personalities together for important discussions – also during these crucial days ” – Foreign Minister of Sweden, Carl Bildt.
Doha Forum 2012

“ This forum (Doha Forum) is of special importance in the context of the current global financial crisis, the emphasis on education, training, and development. It also looks at the importance of foreign investment and international aid in achieving national development ” – President of Sri Lanka Mahinda Rajapaksa
Doha Forum 2013

“ Platforms like the Doha Forum are extremely important to find solutions to regional and international issues ” – Director of the Center for Middle East Development at UCLA Steven L. Spiege
Doha Forum 2014

“ We clearly share, from our diverse stances, the passion to construct a new world. A safer world, fairer, more inclusive, more in peace, more secure, with greater understanding amongst people ” – Vice President of Argentina, Amado Boudou.
Doha Forum 2015

“ You have to be clear why you want change and what reforms mean ” – HE Prime Minister and Interior Minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al-Thani.
Doha Forum 2016

“ This forum is very important, not only because of the topics but due to the opportunity it provides to learn ” – Special Representative and Head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq, Ján Kubiš
Doha Forum 2017

“I would like to thank the organizers of the Doha forum for bringing together so many government officials, business people and other dynamic partners. We would also like to express appreciation to His Highness Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani Qatar’s support to the United Nations. The country continues to play a key role in ensuring timely, predictable and flexible financing to help the United Nations meet the needs of vulnerable people. ” – Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, H.E Amina Mohammed.
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“Centralization and Decentralization in Syria: The Concept and Practice.” New America, DC

November 15, 2018

New America holds a discussion on a new report, “Centralization and Decentralization in Syria: The Concept and Practice.”

SECTION: DISCUSSION; ||SYRIA/RIGHTS|| Foreign Affairs

LENGTH: 88 words

TIME: 12:30 p.m.

PARTICIPANTS: Aamar Kahf, executive director of the Omran Center for Strategic Studies; Yaser Tabbara, co-founder of the Omran Center for Strategic Studies; Mona Yacoubian, senior adviser at the United States Institute of Peace; and Peter Bergen, vice president of New America

LOCATION: New America, 740 15th Street NW, Suite 900, Washington, D.C.

Jamal Khashoggi was a journalist, not a jihadist, CNN.com

CNN Wire

October 22, 2018 Monday 11:26 AM GMT

Jamal Khashoggi was a journalist, not a jihadist

BYLINE: By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst

LENGTH: 1494 words

DATELINE: (CNN)

Editor’s note: Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. He is the author of “The Osama bin Laden I know: An Oral History of al Qaeda’s Leader.”

(CNN) — Corey A. Stewart, the Republican nominee for the Senate seat in Virginia, appeared on CNN Friday and told Anderson Cooper that Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul three weeks ago, was “a mystery guy. He’s a mystery figure. There are a lot of things that say he was a bad guy … there’s a lot of reports out there that he was connected to the Muslim Brotherhood, reports that he was connected to Osama bin Laden.”

This has been a common talking point among some of President Donald Trump’s supporters, which is to suggest that Khashoggi’s killing matters less if he was aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood or once knew Osama bin Laden. Trump and some of his backers have been at pains to blunt the condemnation that has been hurled worldwide at the Saudi regime, and in particular, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in whom the US administration has invested much political capital.

More than a decade ago, long before any of this was a matter of controversy, I interviewed Khashoggi at length in London for a book I was writing, “The Osama bin Laden I Know.” On June 13, 2005, I asked Khashoggi a number of questions about the nature of his relationship with bin Laden, his connection to the Muslim Brotherhood, and the proper role of religion in politics.

When I spoke to Khashoggi, he was working as a media adviser to Prince Turki al Faisal, then Saudi ambassador to the United Kingdom. Before that role, Khashoggi had worked for a variety of Saudi newspapers as a journalist and later an editor. Prior to his journalism career, he had studied business administration at Indiana State University, from which he graduated in 1983.

Khashoggi discussed his pioneering reporting for Arab News about bin Laden, his understanding of the formation of al Qaeda, and the last time he met with bin Laden. Khashoggi also discussed his feelings about the 9/11 attacks and his hopes and fears for the future of Saudi Arabia.

What follows are excerpts from that interview. This interview shows that Khashoggi wasn’t some kind of secret jihadist, but a journalist simply doing his job who evolved from an Islamist in his twenties to a more liberal position by the time he was in his forties.

It’s also clear from the interview, which Khashoggi gave 13 years before he was was killed in what the Saudi foreign minister agrees was a murder (and six years before US Navy SEALS killed bin Laden), that he had once been close to bin Laden, but had become increasingly alienated from him, particularly beginning two decades ago when bin Laden first declared his war against the United States.

By 2005, Khashoggi said he had also rejected the Islamist idea of creating an Islamic state and had turned against the religious establishment in Saudi Arabia. He also had embraced the Enlightenment and American idea of the separation of church and state.

Khashoggi attended college in Indiana during the late 1970s and early 1980s, a period when he first became interested in political Islam.

“I was introduced to political Islam and I become an activist in a sense. It was after 1980, with the Iranian revolution and the rise of Islamic awareness throughout the world. I was still living in Terre Haute (Indiana) at that time and I began to attend Islamic conferences and meetings.”

“Seven months after my graduation [from college in Indiana] I ended up in working in a [Saudi] newspaper. I was about 24 or 25. I was religious at that time.”

Khashoggi came to know bin Laden when he was living in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in the early 1980s.

“Osama was just like many of us who become part of the [Muslim] Brotherhood movement in Saudi Arabia. The only difference that set him apart from others, and me, he was more religious. More religious, more literal, more fundamentalist. For example, he would not listen to music. He would not shake hands with a woman. He would not smoke. He would not watch television, unless it is news. He wouldn’t play cards. He would not put a picture on his wall. But more than that, there was also a harsh or radical side in his life. I’m sure you have some people like that in your culture. For example, even though he comes from a rich family, he lives in a very simple house.”

Khashoggi was the first journalist from a mainstream Arab media organization to cover the Arab volunteers fighting in Afghanistan against the Soviets during the 1980s.

“In late ’87 I had a scoop. I was invited to write about the role of Arab mujahideen in Afghanistan and I liked the idea. It was Osama [who invited me]. I knew him slightly in Jeddah. We were almost the same age. I liked his enthusiasm. He was very enthusiastic, very devoted. We are from the same generation, same background. I went to Peshawar [in Pakistan] and then I traveled inside Afghanistan. [I found a] very enthusiastic bunch of Arabs who believe in what they are doing, very proud of what they are doing.”

“I interviewed Osama. [He was] a gentle, enthusiastic young man of few words who didn’t raise his voice while talking. [We discussed] the condition of the mujahideen and what he [bin Laden] was doing to help them. I did not know him thoroughly enough to judge him or expect any other thing from him. His behavior at that time left no impression that he would become what he has become.”

Bin Laden founded al Qaeda in Peshawar, Pakistan, in August 1988. He soon told Khashoggi about his plans for the group.

“Al Qaeda was founded almost the same time when I first heard it from Osama himself. Bin Laden saw that Afghan jihad would be over soon, the Soviets have withdrawn, and it’s just a matter of time. He predicted that the mujahideen would be victorious in weeks or months. So what will we do with those Arab mujahideen? They will go back to their countries, but the flame of jihad should continue elsewhere, so he saw that there would be opportunities in places like Central Asia. But there was no talk of United States, Europe. It will be called al Qaeda. Whenever we see an opportunity of jihad arising, we will call upon those members of al Qaeda to come and join us.”

“I was surprised, and I discussed it with him, and I said: ‘But Arab regimes will not like that.'”

Khashoggi met bin Laden for the last time in in 1995 in Sudan, where al Qaeda’s leader was then living in exile.

“Osama was almost about to change his mind and reconcile and come back to Saudi Arabia. It was a lost opportunity.”

In 1997, bin Laden gave a bellicose interview to CNN and subsequently issued a declaration saying he was at war with the United States.

“I was very much surprised to see Osama turning into radicalism the way he did. When I heard that announcement in that declaration he made. It is not Osama. It is not the way he was brought up.”

Khashoggi was at work when he first heard the news of the 9/11 attacks.

“I was in my office in Arab News in Jeddah. I was thinking of Osama at that time. I was thinking of him — no doubt about it. Two days later I wrote an article about 9/11 and I said, ‘May God help us. The Americans will come out from their wounds, but we will have a problem to last us some time.’ And I think I’m right.”

Khashoggi explained his political vision for Saudi Arabia and the wider Middle East, which was to find an accommodation between secularism and Islam.

“Right now I don’t believe that we must create an Islamic state. I think an Islamic state would be a burden, maybe would fail, and people will have a big disappointment. Maybe it would shake our belief in the faith if we insist on establishing an Islamic state. What if the Islamic state failed? Like in Iran. Then we are going to doubt the religion itself. The Quran stresses that it is prohibited to force the religion on others. ‘There is no compulsion in religion.’ It’s a matter of choice.”

“I think we must find a way where we can accommodate secularism and Islam, something like what they have in Turkey.”

In 2003, Khashoggi was forced out from his job as editor of the Saudi Al Watan newspaper because of critiques he had published of the conservative Wahhabi religious establishment in Saudi Arabia.

“The clergy. They didn’t like me. They didn’t like the way I ran the paper. Totally lobbied against me and they got me out. I miss journalism and I think it’s a very interesting time in my country. I see change, and I would like to be part of that change.”

Stewart and other Trump supporters who are hoping to smear a murdered journalist with his relationship with bin Laden that ended almost 2½ decades ago, or his purported Islamist sympathies, are not familiar with the facts of the matter, which Khashoggi laid out clearly in his 2005 interview.

The big question in the bomb case, CNN.com

October 24, 2018 Wednesday 8:19 PM GMT

The big question in the bomb case

BYLINE: By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst

LENGTH: 618 words

DATELINE: (CNN)

Editor’s note: Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University.

(CNN) — Six explosive devices were sent to leaders of the Democratic Party, including two former Presidents, and to CNN and George Soros, who are both the targets of criticism from President Donald Trump and others on the right. The motive is unknown.

But the even bigger question, of course, is: Who is the person or persons behind these attacks?

Determining that may take some time if the bombmaker or -makers is skilled in covering their tracks.

Recall that the “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski dispatched a series of bombs in the mail over the course of 17 years to academics and businessmen who he felt were opposed to his obscure neo-Luddite beliefs.

Kaczynski killed three people and injured 23 others before the FBI finally arrested him in 1996. That arrest was instigated by a tip from Kaczynski’s brother.

Recall also the anthrax-laced letters that were sent to media organizations and congressional offices in the weeks after 9/11. Five people died from anthrax inhalation. It took the FBI seven years to finger leading American microbiologist Bruce Ivins for the attacks. Ivins committed suicide as authorities closed in.

Kaczynski and Ivins were both operating alone and were not part of a group.

These “lone actor” cases are often harder for law enforcement to solve than when there is a larger conspiracy involving multiple terrorists.

That said, today there are more tools available to law enforcement than in the earlier cases, which can help them find terrorists — not least, almost ubiquitous surveillance cameras and more precise DNA technology.

Because of the 9/11 attacks, Americans often frame “terrorism” around jihadist terrorist operations. But the fact is there are other forms of political violence in the United States, which is why it was refreshing to hear top New York officials on Wednesday describe the six explosive devices that were sent to the leading Democrats, George Soros and CNN as terrorist acts.

Recent terrorism has emanated from the left and right. In June 2017, 66-year-old James T. Hodgkinson III attacked Republican members of Congress who were practicing baseball in Alexandria, Virginia, injuring five, including House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, who was gravely wounded.

Hodgkinson had posted on Facebook: “Trump is a Traitor. Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It’s Time to Destroy Trump & Co.” Hodgkinson was shot by police officers and died after his attack.

Seven months earlier, on December 5, 2016, believing a debunked right-wing conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring out of the basement of the Comet Ping Pong pizza joint in northwest Washington, DC, 28-year-old Edgar Welch of Salisbury, North Carolina, went to Washington to “self-investigate.”

Welch walked into the popular pizza restaurant carrying an assault rifle and started firing shots. He pointed the firearm in the direction of a restaurant employee, who fled and notified police who arrested Welch. Welch told investigators that he had come armed to help rescue the children.

Since 9/11, while 104 Americans in the United States have been killed by jihadist terrorists, 73 have been killed by far-right terrorists and eight have been killed by terrorists motivated by black nationalist ideology, according to New America, a research institution.

The bombs that were sent to the Democratic Party leaders, George Soros and CNN remind us that political violence in the United Sates can come from a wide range of ideologies and motivations.

TM & © 2018 Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company. All rights reserved.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newswire

Trump’s laughable southern border scare, CNN.com

Trump’s laughable southern border scare

By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst

“Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University.”

(CNN)The caravan of some 7,500 migrants wending its way north through Mexico is a political gift to President Donald Trump, who ran successfully on a get-tough on immigration and terrorism platform during his presidential campaign.

Trump tweeted Monday that there are “unknown Middle Easterners mixed” in with the thousands of migrants. The intent of this tweet is surely to play on American fears about the possibility of mysterious Middle Easterners attacking the country, as they did on 9/11.

There is just one problem with this notion: Every lethal terrorist attack in the United States since 9/11 has been carried out by a US citizen or legal resident, according to New America, a research institution that tracks jihadist terrorism cases.

In addition, of the more than 400 jihadist terrorist cases prosecuted in the United States in the past 17 years, not one of the terrorists infiltrated the country across the southern border, according to New America’s research.

Of course, the notion of a terrorist joining a caravan of migrants who are being filmed continuously for a matter of weeks is implausible on its face.

Since 9/11, three foreign terrorist organizations have mounted serious plots to attack the United States, and all the plotters flew into the country from South Asia and the Middle East. None of them crossed over the US-Mexico border.

Najibullah Zazi was trained by al Qaeda to blow up bombs in the Manhattan subway in 2009. He arrived in the United States from Pakistan by plane.
So too did Faisal Shahzad, whom the Pakistani Taliban trained to blow up a bomb in Manhattan a year later. Neither plot succeeded.
“Underwear bomber” Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab flew into the country on Christmas Day 2009 on the plane that he tried unsuccessfully to blow up over Detroit. Al Qaeda in Yemen had trained him.

The only cross-border infiltration by a terrorist was almost two decades ago when Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian, was arrested on a ferry arriving in Washington state from Canada on December 14, 1999. As Ressam’s car rolled out of the ferry, a US customs inspector pulled him over. Agents found 130 pounds of explosives in Ressam’s car. Ressam planned to bomb Los Angeles International Airport.
Despite the Ressam case, fomenting fears of terrorists crossing the border from Canada hasn’t gained much political traction in the United States.

The view that terrorists are streaming across the southern border, however, is not uncommon among Trump supporters, not least retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who was Tr
ump’s first national security adviser and who claimed in an August 2016 interview that there were Arabic signs along the US-Mexico border to guide potential terrorists into the States.
Flynn said, “I have personally seen the photos of the signage along those paths that are in Arabic. They’re like waypoints along that path as you come in. Primarily, in this case the one that I saw was in Texas and it’s literally, it’s like signs, that say, in Arabic, ‘This way, move to this point.’ It’s unbelievable.”

It was unbelievable, of course, because it was totally false.

So too is the canard that Mexico is a hotbed of jihadist terrorism, but that is not going to get in the way of Trump trying to make this an issue as the midterm elections draw closer.

Yes, there is such a thing as right-wing terrorism, CNN.com

Yes, there is such a thing as right-wing terrorism

By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst

Updated 9:49 AM ET, Fri October 26, 2018

“Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University.”

(CNN)A common trope on the right is that the suspected bombs sent to Democratic Party leaders, CNN and critics of President Donald Trump couldn’t have been sent by a right-wing terrorist.

On his radio show, Rush Limbaugh asserted, “Republicans just don’t do this kind of thing.”
Prominent conservative commentator Ann Coulter tweeted to her more than 2 million followers, “From the Haymarket riot to the Unibomber (sic) bombs are a liberal tactic.”

Fox Business News anchor Lou Dobbs — in a since-deleted tweet — claimed that the devices were “Fake news-Fake bombs. Who could possibly benefit by so much fakery?”

Of course, we don’t yet know the exact motivation of the person responsible for the mail bombs, but we do know that there is, in fact, a long history of political violence emanating from the far right. Claims that bombings are a liberal tactic, or that right-wing terrorists don’t exist, are simply false.

Recall first that the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing was, at the time, the most lethal act of terrorism ever on US soil. The bombing killed 168 people and was carried out by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, who both had a long association with far-right causes.

Indeed, since 9/11, terrorists motivated by far-right ideologies have killed 73 people in the United States, according to New America, a research institution that tracks political violence.

Meanwhile, during the same time period in the United States, eight people were killed by terrorists motivated by black nationalist ideology, while jihadist terrorists have killed 104.

Leftist terrorists have not killed anyone during this period in the United States, though an anti-Trump fanatic shot and gravely wounded Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, senior House Republican, last year in Virginia when he was attending a baseball practice.

We simply don’t know yet who is responsible for this series of pipe bomb packages or why they sent them, but those asserting that it couldn’t be a right-wing terrorist clearly have no knowledge about the history of terrorism in the United States.

Homegrown terrorism: A plague we cannot ignore, CNN.com

Homegrown terrorism: A plague we cannot ignore

By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst

Updated 12:20 PM ET, Sun October 28, 2018

“Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. He is the author of “United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists.”

(CNN)9/11 is one of the hinge events in American history. Understandably Americans therefore tend to filter the concept of “terrorism” though the lens of jihadist terrorism.

Saturday’s massacre at a Jewish synagogue in Pittsburgh reminds us that political violence, partly enabled by the most permissive gun laws in the West, is a recurring plague in the United States.

If the series of bombs mailed this past week to multiple leaders of the Democratic Party, CNN and to prominent Jewish philanthropist George Soros was not reminder enough, now we have the tragedy in Pittsburgh that reminds us that lethal anti-Semitism is a feature of American domestic terrorism. According to a statement from the Anti-Defamation League, the killings were “the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in the history of the United States.”

Grim toll

Since 9/11, 18 people have been killed in anti-Semitic attacks in the United States.

In 2002, Egyptian-American Hesham Mohamed Hadayet shot up the ticket counter of the Israeli airline El Al at Los Angeles International Airport, killing two people before an airline security guard shot him dead.

The same year, Pakistani-American Naveed Haq killed a woman at a Jewish community center in the Seattle area and wounded five others.

In 2009, James W. von Brunn, a white supremacist, killed a security guard at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC.

Five years later, Frazier Glenn Cross, shouted “Heil Hitler” after killing three people — two at the Jewish Community Center in Kansas City and one at a Jewish retirement community nearby.
Now comes Saturday’s massacre near Pittsburgh in which at least 11 people were killed by Robert Bowers, who made anti-Semitic statements during the shooting, according to law enforcement officials who spoke to CNN.

Bowers blamed Jews for the migrant caravan that is now moving through Mexico, according to his social media posts.

A week of terrorism

In the wake of the wave of multiple suspected bombs that were mailed to Democratic party leaders, CNN and Soros, prominent Trump supporters such as Lou Dobbs, Anne Coulter and Rush Limbaugh all made comments which essentially disputed the notion that such a terrorist incident could have come from the right.

They were immediately proved wrong Friday with the arrest of a Florida man, who plastered his van with stickers backing Donald Trump and assailing Democrats.
And that narrative was emphatically put to rest with the tragic attack on Saturday.

This past week, racist violence in the United States claimed the lives of two African-Americans in a Kroger store in the Louisville area on Wednesday by alleged shooter Gregory A. Bush Sr., 51.
Bush, who is white, had a history of making racist threats and he had tried unsuccessfully to gain entry to a predominantly black church just minutes before the Kroger shooting, according to local police.

The terrorist attacks in Pittsburgh and Louisville bring the total number of deaths perpetrated by far-right extremists in the United States since 9/11 to 86 people, according to New America, a research institution that tracks political violence. Meanwhile, jihadist terrorists have killed 104 during the same time period, according to the same research.

Taking the threat seriously

After 9/11, America went on a war footing and instituted a huge number of expensive measures to protect the homeland from the jihadist threat. But now that we see the horrors of domestic terrorism play out, are there things which should be done to take this threat more seriously?

A spokesman for the FBI Agents Association told CNN’s Josh Campbell on Saturday, “It is time to treat domestic terrorism as the national threat that it is, and track, analyze and punish political violence at the federal level. Winning the fight against domestic terrorism is not about parties or political views; it is about ending political violence.” The spokesman observed that domestic terrorism is not currently a federal crime.

Making domestic terrorism a federal crime would certainly make a powerful statement that all forms of political violence are unacceptable.
A complicating factor in the United States is that the First Amendment protects all hateful speech. This is not the case in countries such as the United Kingdom, where inciting racial or religious hatred is a crime, or in Germany, where Holocaust denial is a crime.

While it is a crime for an American to provide support to a State Department-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization such as ISIS, the First Amendment allows Americans to support or be part of neo-Nazi organizations as well as leftist militant movements.

If there were to be federal statute that allowed Americans to be charged for domestic terrorism, it would have to be artfully constructed so that it doesn’t end up criminalizing protected speech, only violent conduct.

Zeros trying to be heroes: what motivates terrorists, CNN.com

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CNN.com

October 30, 2018 Tuesday 4:42 PM EST

Zeros trying to be heroes: what motivates terrorists

BYLINE: By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst

SECTION: OPINIONS

LENGTH: 924 words

When I was researching a book about Americans becoming violent jihadists, again and again I was struck by how often they were men who were going nowhere fast in life and who turned to violent jihadist ideology as a way of giving their lives greater meaning. They were often zeros trying to be heroes in their own story.

The terrorist incidents of the past week in the United States show that this can also be the case for alleged right-wing terrorists such as Cesar Sayoc, who is accused of mailing crude bombs to prominent Democrats and others, and Robert Bowers, who is accused of killing 11 at a synagogue in Pittsburgh.

Both Sayoc and Bowers display some of the same characteristics as American jihadist terrorists: losers who attached themselves to extremist right-wing ideologies that gave meaning to their otherwise dead-end lives.

Consider some well-known American jihadist terrorists. Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his younger brother Dzhokhar blew up bombs killing three spectators at the Boston Marathon in 2013. At the time of the bombings, Tamerlan was unemployed and unemployable. His dreams of being an Olympic-level boxer had long faded and the heroic figure that his family had once looked up to was now sitting on his couch at home, wholly dependent on his wife, who was working 80 hours a week. By becoming a jihadist, Tamerlan was in his own mind once again the heroic figure that he fervently believed himself to be.

Consider also Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 at the Fort Hood army base in Texas in 2009. Hasan was about to turn forty, and he was unmarried and almost entirely friendless. He was a mediocre army officer who had recently been ordered to go to Afghanistan, which he was very worried about. On his business cards, Hasan had printed the words “SOA,” which was short for “Soldier of Allah.” Hasan secretly saw himself as a holy warrior, and the massacre at Fort Hood was his twisted way of becoming that warrior he dreamed of being.

American forensic psychologist Reid Meloy, together with Jessica Yakeley, published a 2014 study of terrorists such as Hasan, people who were not part of a formal terrorist organization. They found that they started with a “grievance” that was often “an event or series of events that involve loss and often humiliation of the subject. … Such intense grievances require that individuals take no personal responsibility for their failures in life … they are ‘injustice collectors.'”

Meloy, who has consulted with the FBI, explains that what often follows the grievance is “moral outrage,” which is embedded “in an historical, religious or political cause or event.” Grievance and moral outrage are then “framed by an ideology,” but the ideology is secondary; it functions as rationale for the terrorist to carry out the violent act he is planning. Meloy explains, “This framing is absolutist and simplistic, providing a clarity that both rationalizes behavior and masks other, more personal grievances.”

This seems like an almost perfect description of Cesar Sayoc, 56, of Aventura, Florida who had led an itinerant life as a sometime male dancer, occasional DJ at a strip club, and pizza delivery guy. At the time of his arrest, Sayoc was living out of a van plastered with images of President Donald Trump and of some of Trump’s critics with targets over their faces. Sayoc also posted virulently anti-Muslim messages on the Internet.

Sayoc was arrested Friday by the FBI after he had allegedly sent 15 crude bombs to prominent Democrats, former officials and CNN. The bombs didn’t explode.

Robert Bowers, the man accused of gunning down 11 at the Pittsburgh synagogue, fits the same profile as Sayoc. According to the New York Times, Bowers lived in a “shabby one-bedroom” apartment and was “an isolated, awkward man who lived alone and struggled with basic human interactions.”

Bowers had posted multiple anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant posts on Gab, a social media network, before he carried out the massacre at the synagogue. Bowers frequently posted conspiracy theories about the migrant march now wending its way through Mexico to the United States, which is a major preoccupation of Trump supporters.

For his assault, Bowers used the weapon of choice for mass shooters in the United States: the AR-15, a semi-automatic rifle that is a perfect weapon to kill lots of people.

What to do about these lone terrorists who are unconnected to formal jihadist organizations or to right-wing extremist groups? The obvious start would be tightening gun laws around semi-automatic weapons that are designed to kill other human beings. My in-laws in Louisiana do not go deer hunting with AR-15s.

But good luck with that, as the NRA has killed the most modest gun control measures, even in the wake of the 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, in which 49 were killed by another loser-turned-jihadist, Omar Mateen. Mateen had legally purchased semi-automatic weapons, despite the fact that he had been interviewed twice by the FBI because of his jihadist sympathies.

So, we will continue to live in country where massacres by American jihadist terrorists and right-wing extremists, enabled by the laxest gun laws in the West, will be a regular feature of American life. Pity that the right to life of their many victims is outweighed by the Second Amendment absolutists at the NRA.

The truth is that zeros wanting to be heroes, motivated by a number of toxic ideologies and armed with semi-automatic weapons, will likely continue to massacre Americans at frequent intervals for the foreseeable future.

The global fallout from the Khashoggi murder is bad news for the Saudis, CNN.com

U.S. Edition+

The global fallout from the Khashoggi murder is bad news for the Saudis
By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst
Updated 8:21 AM ET, Thu November 1, 2018

Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. He is the author of “United States of Jihad: Investigating America’s Homegrown Terrorists.”

Doha, Qatar

(CNN)The murder of Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul four weeks ago has severely damaged the reputation of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has been a favorite of the Trump administration.

It seems unlikely that President Trump will do anything especially substantive to punish the Saudis for the murder, since Trump has repeatedly pointed to the purported $110 billion of arms sales he has secured from Saudi Arabia as a rationale for maintaining close ties with the kingdom. (Here, Trump is making the mistake of believing his own propaganda, because, thus far, only a small fraction of those sales is actually happening.)

Trump also needs the Saudis as allies for his anti-Iran policy, and because it is the largest exporter of oil in the world and therefore has the power to set oil prices.
Even if the Trump administration doesn’t do much to punish Saudi Arabia, that doesn’t mean there isn’t already global fallout for Mohammed bin Salman, widely known as MBS.

Potential investors in Saudi Arabia were already unsettled last year when MBS imprisoned some two hundred businessmen and princes on charges of supposed corruption. They were held at the Ritz Carlton in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, and freed only after more than $35 billion were extracted from them, according to MBS himself in an interview with Bloomberg News. This surely must be the most expensive hotel bill in history.

The murder of Khashoggi, and the Saudi government’s multiple, implausible accounts about his fate, served to underscore MBS’s previous rash moves. His botched invasion of Yemen in 2015 has helped to precipitate the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, according to the UN. Last year MBS also launched the blockade of neighboring gas-rich Qatar, and presided over the bizarre de facto abduction and short-lived “resignation” of the Lebanese prime minister when he was visiting the kingdom.

Because of Khashoggi’s murder, MBS’s grandiose “Davos in the Desert” conference in Saudi Arabia a week ago was a damp squib, with many leading businessmen and all Western media organizations pulling out of the event.

That is likely to have some real effects on MBS’s ambitious “Vision 2030” plan to diversify the economy of Saudi Arabia. While defense contractors and oil companies will likely conduct business as usual with the kingdom, the other investors that MBS was hoping to attract to transform the heavily oil-dependent Saudi economy are much less likely to do business with it.

British billionaire Richard Branson, for instance, has suspended his involvement in two tourism projects in Saudi Arabia, as well as discussions about a possible $1 billion Saudi investment in his space ventures.

After Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan officially confirmed Khashoggi’s murder last week, the Trump administration signaled that its long acquiescence in the conduct of the Saudi-led war in Yemen has finally evaporated. According to the UN, at least 16,000 civilians have died in the past three years in Yemen, mostly in airstrikes attributed to the Saudis.

On Tuesday, US Secretary of Defense James Mattis called for a ceasefire in Yemen, leading to peace talks within a month, as did US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

In Congress, members who are concerned by the Saudi conduct of the war in Yemen are calling to end American intelligence support to the Saudis, and to end US aerial refueling for Saudi aircraft involved in the conflict. If the Democrats take the House in the midterm election on November 6, those calls are only likely to amplify.

The skepticism about the Saudis is now bipartisan; on Wednesday a group of Republican senators asked Trump to suspend negotiations over a US-Saudi civil nuclear agreement because of concerns about the conduct of the war in Yemen and the murder of Khashoggi.

The blockade of Qatar

The small state of Qatar sits on some of the largest natural gas reserves in the world. It is also home to the largest US military base in the Middle East, which coordinates the wars against ISIS and the Taliban and is also the launchpad for airstrikes against these groups.

According to a former US official with knowledge of the basing arrangement in Qatar, the Qataris pay 90% of the costs for the base, the kind of deal that Trump should have found to his liking — an American base almost entirely paid for by another country.

Qatar also houses regional hubs of several leading American universities, such as Georgetown and Cornell.

So it was surprising that President Trump endorsed the Saudi-led blockade of Qatar when it began last June. This came shortly after Trump had made his first overseas trip as President to Saudi Arabia, where he was treated to a fawning welcome.

As the blockade got underway, Trump immediately aligned himself with Saudi talking points about Qatar, tweeting, “So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding……extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!”

Joshua Geltzer, the former senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council for both President Obama and President Trump, says that, in fact, “The Qataris were generally important counterterrorism partners. The biggest sticking point was the terrorism financing issue. My sense is that they’ve realized over time the concerns about that and are working to tighten up their approach to that critical aspect of dealing with the terrorism challenge.” (Geltzer is a fellow at New America, where I also work.)

Belatedly, Trump realized that the blockade of Qatar made little sense from an American national security perspective and tried to put pressure on the Saudis to lift it, so far to no avail.

Today, Qatar looks like a far more natural ally for the United States than the Saudis. Qatar has the second highest per capita income in the world and, by Gulf standards, it has a relaxed approach to social mores. It is also home to the Al Jazeera television network, which is one of the few independent sources of news in the Arab world.
And it continues to house the most important US military base in the Middle East.

Qatar is also hosting an office for the Taliban. After 17 years of war with no end in sight in Afghanistan, the Trump administration has proven willing — perhaps surprisingly — to enter into direct negations with the Taliban, which are taking place in Qatar.

The Qataris seemed to have weathered the blockade well. At one point they feared it was a prelude to a military invasion by their much larger neighbor, Saudi Arabia. That hasn’t happened.
Now it is the Saudis who have to worry about how the rest of the world sees them and deals with them, despite their key importance to global oil markets. It’s just one of the unexpected consequences of their murder of a journalist in a Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Pai

Trump’s uncritical embrace of MBS set the stage for Khashoggi crisis , CNN.com

Trump’s uncritical embrace of MBS set the stage for Khashoggi crisis

Trump’s uncritical embrace of MBS set the stage for Khashoggi crisis
By Peter Bergen, CNN National Security Analyst
Updated 6:30 PM ET, Mon October 15, 2018

Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. He is writing a book for Penguin/Random House about the national security decision-making of the Trump administration and has reported frequently from Saudi Arabia since 2005.

(CNN)In Saudi Arabia in May 2017, President Donald Trump, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and key members of the US Cabinet were treated to a royal, red carpet visit designed to appeal to Trump’s fetish for being fawned over, featuring elaborate, ceremonial sword dances in a blinged out, opulent palace that made Trump Tower look relatively modest.

Trump more than returned the favor, delivering a speech in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, in which he told the leaders of the Gulf States and other Muslim heads of state that he wasn’t going to hassle them about human rights, declaring, “We are not here to lecture—we are not here to tell other people how to live, what to do, who to be…”

That speech turned out to be a green light for the wild adventures of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, starting with an illegal blockade of Qatar two weeks later. Under bin Salman’s growing control of the Saudi state, the hands-off American policy has continued, despite a humanitarian nightmare in Yemen, the seeming extortion of Saudi oligarchs of tens of billions of dollars and, if the allegations of Turkish officials are to be believed, the murder and dismemberment of a prominent Saudi writer inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

The mysterious disappearance of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi, raises important questions, not only about the nature of the Saudi regime, but also about the Trump administration’s uncritical embrace of its 33-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a close alliance that was engineered by President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who was awarded the Middle East portfolio during the presidential transition.

On the campaign trail Trump had repeatedly denounced the Iranian nuclear agreement negotiated by the Obama administration as “the worst deal ever.” This stance very much aligned with the views of the Gulf States, led by the Saudis, who felt that President Obama was empowering Iran at their expense.
Like much of the rest of the world, though, the Saudis didn’t expect Trump to win the presidential election. When he did, the Saudis and their close allies the Emiratis had to scramble to build bridges to the Trump team.

Through intermediaries such as billionaire businessmen Thomas Barrack, a close friend of Trump who has worked in the Arab world for decades, as well as the longtime Emirati ambassador to the United States, Yousef al-Otaiba, Kushner was put in touch with Mohammed bin Salman, according to the New York Times.
T
Mohammed bin Salman’s 82-year-old father, King Salman, is monarch in name, but it’s clear that his son, who is widely known as MBS, is the center of power in the Saudi kingdom.
Both the scions of enormously wealthy, powerful families and only a few years apart in age, Kushner and MBS bonded over a belief they could transform the Middle East. They sometimes communicated through the secure WhatsApp messaging app that is used by members of the Saudi royal court, according to a Saudi source close to the royal family.

The Saudi royal family believed they could do business with the Trump family and vice versa, and the Saudis felt that Kushner spoke for the president.
For his part, Kushner believed that MBS could help deliver a US-brokered solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that their personal relationship could achieve what decades of professional diplomacy hadn’t achieved.

What’s more, Trump, who had campaigned on a promise of excluding Muslim immigrants from the United States, could use some Arab allies, while the Trump administration and the Gulf States were in lock step in their deep suspicion of the Iranian regime.

On March 14, 2017, early in the Trump administration, when MBS was still only the deputy crown prince, he had lunch with President Trump and his top national security advisers at the White House, an unusual honor for someone who was not a head of state and not even the next in line to the throne, which at the time was MBS’s cousin, Mohamed bin Nayef.
That White House lunch helped to tee up Trump’s first overseas trip, which was to Saudi Arabia. Traditionally, American presidents make their first overseas trip to close, democratic allies such as Canada, but in a coup for the Saudis, the honor went to them.

Two weeks after Trump’s trip to Riyadh, the Saudis led an Arab blockade of gas-rich Qatar, closing all border crossings and cutting off air and sea travel.
This was a long-term goal of the Saudis who have long found their enormously wealthy, tiny neighbor to be an irritant because it hosts the TV network, Al Jazeera, which is often critical of other Arab states, and because it is sympathetic to Islamist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood.

Trump cheered on the blockade, tweeting, “So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding……extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!”

This was the green light that the Saudis needed to keep up the blockade that continues to this day. In international law, a blockade is an act of war.
When Trump made his celebratory tweet about the blockade, he seemed to have no idea that Qatar housed the largest US base in the Middle East, which was also the most important base in the counter-ISIS fight, a base that is almost entirely paid for by the Qataris, according to a US diplomatic source.

The two members of the Trump cabinet who had had extensive dealings with the Qataris objected to the blockade. Secretary of Defense James Mattis understood the key importance of the base in Qatar for the fight against ISIS, while then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, had long experience working with the Qataris when he was the CEO of Exxon. Qatar has the third largest natural gas reserves in the world.

Belatedly understanding the important role that Qatar played in the counter-ISIS fight, Trump later tried to put pressure on the Arab states to lift their blockade, to no avail.

MBS cracks down

A month after Trump’s trip to Riyadh, in a palace coup, MBS forced his cousin Mohammed bin Nayef to step down as Crown Prince. Nayef was long regarded as a safe pair of hands by the CIA because of his aggressive efforts to stamp out al Qaeda in the kingdom when he was the Minister of the Interior.

After removing his cousin as Crown Prince and making himself the heir apparent, MBS also set out to remove all other possible challenges to his total grip on power using a Stalinist playbook, minus the gulags.

In November, some 200 wealthy businessmen and princes were famously jailed in the Ritz Carlton in Riyadh — where six months earlier Trump and Kushner had been royally welcomed — and were only released after they had ponied up many billions of dollars that they had purportedly acquired through corruption.

Corruption is an odd charge in Saudi Arabia where there is so little separation between the ruling family and the resources of the state that it is the only country in the world where the ruling family has named an entire country after itself, while MBS thinks nothing of buying expensive gifts for himself, such as a half-billion dollar yacht.

MBS has also imprisoned a range of clerics and civil society activists, some of whom face possible death sentences.

In February, MBS fired much of the leadership of the Saudi military and replaced them with his own picks.

Saudi adventurism abroad

In the past, the invariably geriatric Saudi monarch presided over a conservative foreign policy that was characterized by doing little overseas. MBS by contrast is intervening around the Middle East, not only by leading the blockade of Qatar, but also by starting a war in Yemen. In 2015, MBS began a campaign in Yemen that has helped to precipitate what the UN described earlier this year as the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.

The Trump administration has largely turned a blind eye to the Saudi conduct of its war in Yemen, despite the fact that the Saudi war effort is dependent, in part, on American intelligence and the US aerial refueling of their jet fighters.

In September, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo certified to Congress that the Saudis were trying to reduce civilian casualties in Yemen, a move that was intended to avert any congressional action to stop American support for the Saudis in Yemen.

Last week, however, the UN charged the Saudi-led coalition with killing 1,300 children in air strikes in Yemen over the past three years.

In November MBS forced the Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who is a dual Lebanese-Saudi citizen, to announce his resignation when he was visiting Saudi Arabia. MBS believed that Hariri was in the pocket of Iran-backed Hezbollah, which is a major political force in Lebanon. Hariri eventually returned to Lebanon, as prime minister and MBS’s play backfired badly because Hezbollah and Hariri both emerged stronger after this strange episode.

In addition to supporting their war in Yemen, the Trump administration delivered on another key Saudi foreign policy goal on May 8 when Trump announced he was pulling the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal, a move that was applauded by the Saudis.

Their celebration was short-lived, however, because a week later the United States moved its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

The Saudi royal family styles itself “The Keeper of the Holy Places.” The third holiest site in Islam is the Dome of the Rock on Temple Mount in Jerusalem where the Prophet Mohammed is supposed to have ascended into heaven. By moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, the Trump administration signaled it was prepared to ignore Muslim sentiments about the special status of Jerusalem. And with that move any hope that Kushner had that MBS would help him broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal was likely dead in the water.

Was the bet on MBS worth it?

On Sunday, on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Trump promised “severe punishment” for the Saudis if it is proven that they murdered Jamal Khashoggi as Turkish officials have alleged anonymously to media organizations.

Trump, however, said, “we would be punishing ourselves” by canceling US arms sales to Saudi Arabia, a deal which he has frequently trumpeted as amounting to $110 billion.
This is an excellent example of the dangers of believing your own propaganda because, in reality, as a detailed fact check of this claim by the Washington Post has shown, so far only $4 billion of arms sales to the Saudis have been approved by the US State Department since Trump traveled to Riyadh last year. It remains to be seen if additional arms sales will be approved, but for the moment the sales are considerably smaller than was announced when Trump was in Riyadh more than a year ago.

The Trump administration could sanction specific Saudis involved in Khashoggi’s assassination if it is proven that he was assassinated and certainly would be pressured to do by Congress. But Trump is unlikely to do much more given the fact that the Saudis are an important block to Iran’s regional ambitions, an interest shared with the Trump administration.

The last thing Washington would want is to see the Saudis move closer to Russian President Vladimir Putin. MBS recently visited Moscow for the World Cup. One of Trump’s defenses of the arms sales deal with the Saudis is that if US doesn’t do business with the Saudis, someone else like Russia will.

The Saudis must feel pretty good about what they have extracted from the Trump administration: A free hand to wage war in Yemen with American support; the isolation of their arch nemesis, Iran; acquiescence to their blockade of Qatar, and a warm embrace from the President.

In return, the Trump administration has secured some relatively small-scale arms deals and Kushner is more than likely to emerge empty handed with his much-vaunted and long-awaited Israeli-Palestinian peace plan.
There is a useful Yiddish word for what this all amounts to: bupkis.