The Impact of the Khashoggi Killing
HIRAYAMA Kentaro / Journalist
February 21, 2019
Toward the end of last year, Time magazine announced its Person of the Year for 2018, giving collective recognition to the “guardians of truth,” a group of journalists engaged on the defensive side in the “war on truth,” according to the magazine’s wording. One of these was the US-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered in the Saudi Arabian consulate general in Istanbul, Turkey. The 2018 selection marked the first instance of Time recognizing someone no longer living as the person of the year.
On October 2, 2018, Khashoggi entered the consulate to handle some paperwork related to his marriage with a Turkish woman; there he was killed by Saudi intelligence officials and others. The journalist had fled to the United States in 2017 after drawing Saudi ire for his fierce condemnations of human rights depredations by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, who wields power in Riyadh, and of the country’s military intervention in the Yemeni civil war. He continued criticizing the Saudi regime as a columnist for the Washington Post, and was rumored to have been in touch with antigovernment forces in the Middle Eastern kingdom. Following the killing, the Saudi government, confronted with evidence in the form of audio captured by listening devices placed in the consulate by the Turkish authorities, was forced to admit that murder had taken place; to this day, though, it continues to maintain that the crown prince was not involved in the incident. The team of operatives that carried out the killing, however, is known to have included members of the crown prince’s security detail, and the general take on the situation is that not only was it a premeditated murder, there is little room for doubt about the prince’s personal involvement.
In recent years Saudi Arabia had been seeking to improve its international image and carry out domestic reforms. The kingdom’s state religion is Wahhabism, a fundamentalist strain of Islam; terrorism carried out by Islamic extremists, including the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, has frequently involved Saudi nationals, and the government in Riyadh is increasingly cognizant that doctrinal excesses in the state religion have contributed to this terrorism. Saudi Arabian educators had previously viewed the era prior to the emergence of Islam in the seventh century CE as Jahiliyyah—an “age of ignorance” when humankind was straying from the proper path—and left it out of the school curriculum in history classes. Recently, however, the Saudi authorities have approved investigations of ancient ruins in the kingdom by foreign archaeological teams, and statues and craft items from the pre-Islamic period unearthed on the Arabian Peninsula have been exhibited in Japan and the countries of the West. There have been official moves, in other words, to recognize historical fact as fact, demarcating it from the realm to be ruled by religious dogma.
Recently there have been other bold moves aimed at weakening the grip of fundamentalism: allowing women to drive and allowing the screening of movies in public theaters, for instance. The 33-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman was the driver of these reforms. He also took steps to wrest Saudi Arabia away from its reliance on petroleum and otherwise modernize its economy, building an image for himself as a leader whose methods could be rough, but who was headed in the reform direction. This makes the impact of the Khashoggi killing all the greater. With it the prince’s image has shifted 180 degrees to that of an unpredictable tyrant, and Saudi Arabia itself has suffered reputational harm. This is a serious matter for many members of the royal family; there is discontent with the way that King Salman rapidly elevated his son Mohammed to his position of power, and the crown prince now finds himself in a precarious position where his very future position in the kingdom could be impacted.
As one outcome of this whole incident, though, it is worth focusing on the increasing moves toward peace mediation in the Yemeni civil war. In 2015, when the Houthi—an antigovernment armed movement aligned with a Shia sect of Islam—unilaterally declared itself to be in charge of the nation neighboring Saudi Arabia, the Saudis and Gulf states threw their support behind President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s provisional government and began their military intervention in the conflict. After the fighting bogged down and numerous civilians lost their lives to air raids and other attacks, the United States intensified its criticism of the war, in November 2018 demanding that the sides engineer a ceasefire.
Amid these developments, in December last year a UN-brokered ceasefire brought the two sides to the table in Sweden for peace talks. The Hadi government and Houthi rebels agreed to a prisoner swap extending to some thousands of prisoners of war, as well as to cease hostilities in the port city of Hudaydah, a vital base for supplying humanitarian operations in the war-stricken nation. Chances are high that the Saudis, in order to prevent American views of their nation from worsening still more, pressed the provisional Yemeni government to take its place at the negotiating table. If the murder of Jamal Khashoggi—who opposed military intervention in the struggle and argued for the necessity of a civil reconciliation in Yemen that recognized the rights of the country’s Shia residents—helps to bring about peace there, it will be one step closer to the reality that he wanted to see on the Arabian Peninsula.
Kentaro Hirayama is a former NHK Executive Commentator.
On October 2, 2018, Khashoggi entered the consulate to handle some paperwork related to his marriage with a Turkish woman; there he was killed by Saudi intelligence officials and others. The journalist had fled to the United States in 2017 after drawing Saudi ire for his fierce condemnations of human rights depredations by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, who wields power in Riyadh, and of the country’s military intervention in the Yemeni civil war. He continued criticizing the Saudi regime as a columnist for the Washington Post, and was rumored to have been in touch with antigovernment forces in the Middle Eastern kingdom. Following the killing, the Saudi government, confronted with evidence in the form of audio captured by listening devices placed in the consulate by the Turkish authorities, was forced to admit that murder had taken place; to this day, though, it continues to maintain that the crown prince was not involved in the incident. The team of operatives that carried out the killing, however, is known to have included members of the crown prince’s security detail, and the general take on the situation is that not only was it a premeditated murder, there is little room for doubt about the prince’s personal involvement.
In recent years Saudi Arabia had been seeking to improve its international image and carry out domestic reforms. The kingdom’s state religion is Wahhabism, a fundamentalist strain of Islam; terrorism carried out by Islamic extremists, including the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, has frequently involved Saudi nationals, and the government in Riyadh is increasingly cognizant that doctrinal excesses in the state religion have contributed to this terrorism. Saudi Arabian educators had previously viewed the era prior to the emergence of Islam in the seventh century CE as Jahiliyyah—an “age of ignorance” when humankind was straying from the proper path—and left it out of the school curriculum in history classes. Recently, however, the Saudi authorities have approved investigations of ancient ruins in the kingdom by foreign archaeological teams, and statues and craft items from the pre-Islamic period unearthed on the Arabian Peninsula have been exhibited in Japan and the countries of the West. There have been official moves, in other words, to recognize historical fact as fact, demarcating it from the realm to be ruled by religious dogma.
Recently there have been other bold moves aimed at weakening the grip of fundamentalism: allowing women to drive and allowing the screening of movies in public theaters, for instance. The 33-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman was the driver of these reforms. He also took steps to wrest Saudi Arabia away from its reliance on petroleum and otherwise modernize its economy, building an image for himself as a leader whose methods could be rough, but who was headed in the reform direction. This makes the impact of the Khashoggi killing all the greater. With it the prince’s image has shifted 180 degrees to that of an unpredictable tyrant, and Saudi Arabia itself has suffered reputational harm. This is a serious matter for many members of the royal family; there is discontent with the way that King Salman rapidly elevated his son Mohammed to his position of power, and the crown prince now finds himself in a precarious position where his very future position in the kingdom could be impacted.
As one outcome of this whole incident, though, it is worth focusing on the increasing moves toward peace mediation in the Yemeni civil war. In 2015, when the Houthi—an antigovernment armed movement aligned with a Shia sect of Islam—unilaterally declared itself to be in charge of the nation neighboring Saudi Arabia, the Saudis and Gulf states threw their support behind President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s provisional government and began their military intervention in the conflict. After the fighting bogged down and numerous civilians lost their lives to air raids and other attacks, the United States intensified its criticism of the war, in November 2018 demanding that the sides engineer a ceasefire.
Amid these developments, in December last year a UN-brokered ceasefire brought the two sides to the table in Sweden for peace talks. The Hadi government and Houthi rebels agreed to a prisoner swap extending to some thousands of prisoners of war, as well as to cease hostilities in the port city of Hudaydah, a vital base for supplying humanitarian operations in the war-stricken nation. Chances are high that the Saudis, in order to prevent American views of their nation from worsening still more, pressed the provisional Yemeni government to take its place at the negotiating table. If the murder of Jamal Khashoggi—who opposed military intervention in the struggle and argued for the necessity of a civil reconciliation in Yemen that recognized the rights of the country’s Shia residents—helps to bring about peace there, it will be one step closer to the reality that he wanted to see on the Arabian Peninsula.
Kentaro Hirayama is a former NHK Executive Commentator.
The English-Speaking Union of Japan
カショギ事件の波紋
平山 健太郎 / ジャーナリスト
2019年 2月 21日
米誌タイムは昨年末、恒例の「パーソン・オブ・ザ・イヤー（今年の人）」に、トルコ・イスタンブールのサウジアラビア総領事館内で殺害されたサウジ人記者ジャマル・カショギ氏を、「真実を守る戦い」に貢献した５人の１人に選んだ。同誌が死亡した人をこの枠で取り上げるのはカショギ氏が初めてという。
同氏は昨年10月２日、トルコ人女性との結婚手続きのため訪れたサウジ総領事館内で、サウジ情報機関の工作員に殺害された。同氏はサウジで実権を握るムハンマド皇太子の人権侵害や、イエメン内戦への武力介入などを厳しく批判してサウジ当局ににらまれ、２０１７年アメリカに亡命。ワシントンポスト紙のコラムニストとしてサウジ批判を展開し、またサウジの反体制派グループとも接触していたといわれる。サウジ政府はトルコ政府に傍受された館内の会話内容を突きつけられ、殺害の事実を認めた。ただムハンマド皇太子の関与については一貫して否定している。しかし工作員には同皇太子の警護を担っていた人物がおり、計画的な犯行とあいまって「皇太子の関与はほぼ疑いない」というのが大方の見方だ。
近年、サウジは自国のイメージ刷新と国内改革に努めてきた。同国はワッハーブ派という原理主義的なイスラム教義を国教とするが、米同時多発テロ（２００１年）をはじめ多くのイスラム過激派のテロにサウジ人がかかわり、同国政府にも「教義の行き過ぎがテロを引き起こしてきた」との反省があった。それまで同国はイスラム誕生（７世紀）以前を「無道時代」（ジャーヒリヤ）、つまり人間の道を踏み外した時代としてまともに取り上げず、学校の歴史教育でも教えなかった。しかし近年は外国の考古学者に国内の遺跡の発掘を認め、アラビア半島で出土したイスラム以前の偶像や工芸品などの展覧会を日本を含め欧米で開くなど、教義とは一線を引いて事実は事実として認めようとの姿勢を打ち出していた。
最近の女性への車の運転許可や映画館の解禁は、さらに踏み込んで原理主義的なものを薄める動きで、これを主導してきたのが33歳のムハンマド皇太子だった。皇太子は石油依存の脱却など経済の近代化にも着手し、「乱暴なところもあるが、改革者」と見られてきた。それだけに今回の事件は大きな打撃だ。皇太子の評価は「何をするか分からぬ暴君」へと反転し、サウジ自身のイメージも大きく傷ついた。多くの王族たちにとっても由々しきことで、皇太子が実父のサルマン国王に急速に引き上げられてきた不満もあって、今後、皇太子の地位や将来に影響する可能性もあり、予断を許さない。
ただ事件の波紋で、イエメン内戦への調停の動きが出ていることに注目したい。２０１５年、サウジは隣国イエメンでイスラム教シーア派系の反政府武装組織フーシ派が政権掌握を一方的に宣言したのを機に、イエメンのハディ暫定政権の支援のため湾岸諸国と共に軍事介入した。しかし戦況は泥沼化し、空爆などで多数の市民が巻き添えになっていることにアメリカは批判を強め、昨年11月には停戦を求めていた。
こうしたなか12月に国連の調停で２年ぶりの和平協議がスウェーデンでもたれ、ハディ暫定政権とフーシ派が数千人の捕虜交換と共に、人道支援物資の補給拠点である港湾都市ホデイダでの停戦で合意した。この進展の背景には自国に対する米国の心証をこれ以上悪化させないため、サウジが暫定政権に国連の調停を受け入れるよう求めた可能性が強い。カショギ氏の殺害事件を一つのきっかけとしてイエメン和平が実現するなら、同国への軍事介入に反対し、シーア派の権利を認めた上でのイエメンの国民和解の必要性を訴えていた同氏の主張に現実が少し近づくことになる。
筆者は元NHK解説主幹
同氏は昨年10月２日、トルコ人女性との結婚手続きのため訪れたサウジ総領事館内で、サウジ情報機関の工作員に殺害された。同氏はサウジで実権を握るムハンマド皇太子の人権侵害や、イエメン内戦への武力介入などを厳しく批判してサウジ当局ににらまれ、２０１７年アメリカに亡命。ワシントンポスト紙のコラムニストとしてサウジ批判を展開し、またサウジの反体制派グループとも接触していたといわれる。サウジ政府はトルコ政府に傍受された館内の会話内容を突きつけられ、殺害の事実を認めた。ただムハンマド皇太子の関与については一貫して否定している。しかし工作員には同皇太子の警護を担っていた人物がおり、計画的な犯行とあいまって「皇太子の関与はほぼ疑いない」というのが大方の見方だ。
近年、サウジは自国のイメージ刷新と国内改革に努めてきた。同国はワッハーブ派という原理主義的なイスラム教義を国教とするが、米同時多発テロ（２００１年）をはじめ多くのイスラム過激派のテロにサウジ人がかかわり、同国政府にも「教義の行き過ぎがテロを引き起こしてきた」との反省があった。それまで同国はイスラム誕生（７世紀）以前を「無道時代」（ジャーヒリヤ）、つまり人間の道を踏み外した時代としてまともに取り上げず、学校の歴史教育でも教えなかった。しかし近年は外国の考古学者に国内の遺跡の発掘を認め、アラビア半島で出土したイスラム以前の偶像や工芸品などの展覧会を日本を含め欧米で開くなど、教義とは一線を引いて事実は事実として認めようとの姿勢を打ち出していた。
最近の女性への車の運転許可や映画館の解禁は、さらに踏み込んで原理主義的なものを薄める動きで、これを主導してきたのが33歳のムハンマド皇太子だった。皇太子は石油依存の脱却など経済の近代化にも着手し、「乱暴なところもあるが、改革者」と見られてきた。それだけに今回の事件は大きな打撃だ。皇太子の評価は「何をするか分からぬ暴君」へと反転し、サウジ自身のイメージも大きく傷ついた。多くの王族たちにとっても由々しきことで、皇太子が実父のサルマン国王に急速に引き上げられてきた不満もあって、今後、皇太子の地位や将来に影響する可能性もあり、予断を許さない。
ただ事件の波紋で、イエメン内戦への調停の動きが出ていることに注目したい。２０１５年、サウジは隣国イエメンでイスラム教シーア派系の反政府武装組織フーシ派が政権掌握を一方的に宣言したのを機に、イエメンのハディ暫定政権の支援のため湾岸諸国と共に軍事介入した。しかし戦況は泥沼化し、空爆などで多数の市民が巻き添えになっていることにアメリカは批判を強め、昨年11月には停戦を求めていた。
こうしたなか12月に国連の調停で２年ぶりの和平協議がスウェーデンでもたれ、ハディ暫定政権とフーシ派が数千人の捕虜交換と共に、人道支援物資の補給拠点である港湾都市ホデイダでの停戦で合意した。この進展の背景には自国に対する米国の心証をこれ以上悪化させないため、サウジが暫定政権に国連の調停を受け入れるよう求めた可能性が強い。カショギ氏の殺害事件を一つのきっかけとしてイエメン和平が実現するなら、同国への軍事介入に反対し、シーア派の権利を認めた上でのイエメンの国民和解の必要性を訴えていた同氏の主張に現実が少し近づくことになる。
筆者は元NHK解説主幹
一般社団法人 日本英語交流連盟