Reports of the withdrawal of U.S. troops took Afghans by surprise. And it gives the Taliban exactly what they want.
A U.S. flag flies at a checkpoint in the Deh Bala district in Nangarhar province, Afghanistan, on July 8. (Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images)
BYASHLEY JACKSON|
Fears that U.S. President Donald Trump would decide to reverse course and withdraw troops from Afghanistan are not new. But the latest reports of dramatic plans to bring back 7,000 troops has shocked several sources I have spoken to in the U.S. and Afghan governments. The withdrawal represents nearly half of all U.S. forces in Afghanistan, slashing its armed presence down to its lowest levels since 2002. The news broke a day after Trump’s decision to pull forces from Syria and hours after the resignation of Defense Secretary James Mattis was made public.
It is not necessarily the announcement itself that caught many by surprise, but the timing. Zalmay Khalilzad was appointed as the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation in September, raising hopes that a peaceful settlement to America’s longest war was in sight. Khalilzad—a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan under the George W. Bush administration—has shuttled across the region with a relentless energy since then, and a U.S. delegation concluded three days of talks with the Taliban in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday. There has been more momentum now for talks than ever before, which Trump’s decision significantly undermines.
The reduction in troop numbers diminishes U.S. leverage over the Taliban in negotiations, given that the latter’s stated priority is the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Afghanistan. While the United States has pummeled Taliban targets with airstrikes, now at an all-time high, this has not yet eroded their control or dented their military capacity. The U.S. special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction reported this fall that Afghan government control had fallen to 56 percent of the country’s districts, a record low, and that Afghan National Security Forces casualties had hit a record high. Exact casualty numbers are classified, but the New York Timesestimates an average of 50 Afghan soldiers are killed each week. Afghan forces remain deeply reliant on U.S. support to maintain current levels of control and protect cities vulnerable to Taliban capture.
The Taliban refuse to meet directly with the Afghan government; at the recent talks in Abu Dhabi, a delegation from the Afghan government waited in vain at a nearby hotel in the hope of a face-to-face meeting with the Taliban. There are many within the Taliban who oppose negotiations and advocate waiting out Washington’s patience and money. As the old saying goes, the West may have the watches, but the Taliban have the time. The Taliban have little incentive to agree to any deal quickly, particularly now that Trump has clearly demonstrated a desire to get out—regardless of the cost.
The situation on the ground in Afghanistan has only gotten worse in recent months, with escalating violence and an increasingly unstable government. The National Unity Government has been paralyzed by infighting and division ahead of presidential elections scheduled for April 2019. Results from parliamentary elections held in October have still not been announced. Given the level of disorganization, chaos, and violence that plagued those elections, presidential elections would be farcical if held as planned in the spring. Yet reports that the United States wanted the Afghan government to postpone elections and create an interim government to negotiate peace were met with defiance and outrage in Kabul.
A withdrawal of U.S. troops may force a reckoning within the Afghan government, which was reportedly caught unawares by the announcement. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s most pressing concern to date has been re-election rather than peace, and his intransigence has increasingly frustrated the United States and its allies in the international community. At a donor conference in Geneva in late November, Ghani announced his peace plan with a five-year timeframe, conveniently tying peace talks to his next presidential term should he win in April. Ghani’s plan is little more than a strategy to tighten his faltering grip on power, disguised as reconciliation.
The Afghan president is facing increasing discontent and open opposition from key political backers, many of whom oppose or have publicly expressed doubt about talks with the Taliban. This is not surprising. Many of these individuals have significantly benefited from the war and from U.S. support. They would lose considerable influence and power in any settlement with the Taliban. Some may dig in their heels or look for exit plans. Others, particularly within Jamiat-e-Islami or other old mujahideen factions, may accelerate efforts to re-arm their militias in anticipation of a full U.S. withdrawal.
If Trump were to rashly withdraw the remaining U.S. forces without a sound deal, a gradual decline into a new and more vicious phase of civil war is all but guaranteed. In the vacuum created by U.S. disengagement, regional actors such as Pakistan and Russia would throw their support behind Afghan proxies much as they did during the early 1990s. And while Afghanistan is no longer a major safe haven for international terrorist groups, that could quickly change.
It is clear that the current U.S. administration does not have the appetite or endurance to see through a political end to the war that would avoid this. Peace will take years of sustained effort. There is an alternative: handing the process over to a third party. The United States could back the establishment of an independent peace process focused on three core areas: Taliban-U.S. dialogue regarding an American drawdown of troops, intra-Afghan dialogue on a postwar political settlement, and shoring up support from regional actors.
This may be a pipe dream, as all parties still seem convinced they can secure the best deal themselves and are likely wary of handing over any part of the process to anyone else. However, it is the only responsible policy choice. It would tie the United States, the Taliban, and the Afghan government, along with regional actors, to a long-term process that would, hopefully, prioritize the stability of the country and preserve at least some of the gains made over the past 18 years. It is not only the future of Afghanistan at stake, but also the security of the region and the United States.
Ashley Jackson is a research associate at the Overseas Development Institute and a Ph.D. candidate at King’s College London.@a_a_jackson
The Maldives is estimated to have racked up over $1.3 billion in debt to China.
by Indranil Banerjie-
It is time once again for smiles and handshakes. After several years of frigid relations, India and the Maldives are back to the bonhomie of a traditional friendship. The new Maldivian President, Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, who won a somewhat unanticipated election victory this October, was in New Delhi this week, calling India the “closest friend” of his country.
President Solih’s New Delhi visit and pronouncements marks a radical shift in the decidedly pro-Beijing policy adopted by his predecessor, the rabidly anti-Indian strongman Abdulla Yameen. Mr Yameen had kicked off his authoritative rule by sacking and imprisoning the country’s first democratically-elected President, Mohammed Nasheed, and ruthlessly suppressing real and imagined rivals, including the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
Mr Yameen had virtually cut off all relations with India, forcing Prime Minister Narendra Modi to cancel his 2015 state visit to the Maldives. An unperturbed Mr Yameen had continued to cosy up to China, which poured in money into a number of big-ticket projects including a 2-km-long sea bridge linking the Maldivian capital, Male, with its airport.
China is believed to have secured permission to build ports and military installations in some of the 1,192 islands that comprise the tiny Indian Ocean republic. Chinese naval ships too began to visit Male. When Male cancelled a planned military exercise with New Delhi, it was clear that the country had slipped into the Chinese camp.
Now, with Mr Yameen out and Mr Solih in the top seat, it emerges that Chinese investments in the Maldives were part of a familiar pattern designed to induce indebtedness and further tighten Beijing’s iron grip.
The Maldives is estimated to have racked up over $1.3 billion in debt to China. This amounts to more than a quarter of its entire GDP.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has pledged $1.4 billion in aid to the Maldives which should get that country out of the debt trap sprung by China. This payout is expected to bring Male back to New Delhi’s fold.
A similarly fortuitous turn of political events in neighbouring Sri Lanka has recently gladdened New Delhi. The pro-China political usurper and former President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who had unconstitutionally replaced the country’s democratically-elected Prime Minister, Ranil Wickremesinghe, was forced out late last week. India openly welcomed the reinstatement of Mr Wickremesinghe, and its external affairs ministry spokesman added: “We are confident that India-Sri Lanka relations will continue to move on an upward trajectory.”
Mr Rajapaksa, it will be recalled, had made some major concessions to Beijing and had ended up indebting his country, compelling Colombo to lease out its Hambantota port to China.
Mr Wickremesinghe might be pro-India, but this is not the case with a large and powerful section of Sri Lanka’s political class, which includes the country’s President, Maithripala Sirisena, who had dismissed him.
India might have won a reprieve in the Maldives and Sri Lanka, but that could well be temporary. It was the internal politics of the two nations that had worked in India’s favour and not any overwhelming geopolitical dynamic.
Like it or not, China will continue to remain an attractive proposition in this region with its deep pockets and the potential of balancing New Delhi. Fears of Indian hegemony in South Asia will similarly remain an ineluctable factor in the geopolitics of the region.
On the other hand, fears of the Chinese dragon hug contrasted with India’s tendency to peddle soft power could make regional leaders think twice before once again putting all their eggs in Beijing’s basket.
In the long run, however, matters can only get more complicated in India’s neighbourhood, principally because China’s commissars are intent on making the Indian Ocean their playground.
The rapid development of the Chinese blue water Navy spells ultimate Chinese assertivenesshere as it already is in the China seas.
An aggressive rival in the region is already severely testing India’s influence and infusing new uncertainties. The kind of abrupt anti-India shift and an equally abrupt course correction of the kind seen in the Maldives and Sri Lanka, far from being exceptions, could well become the norm in the future.
In order to immunise our interests from the mercurial politics of the smaller, inherently insecure regional nations, New Delhi requires a broader, more overarching strategy. One possibility would be a closer and more pragmatic tieup with Japan to secure both the military and economic environment of the Indian Ocean region. Japan, unlike the Western powers, does not possess a negative militaristic persona, despite its historical past.
Its defence-oriented military is seen more as a balancing than a bullying or predatory force. The same cannot be said of China or the United States, two nations that are looked upon with considerable suspicion in today’s world, especially in the Indian Ocean region.
Tokyo, despite its manoeuvres designed to reassure Beijing, is quietly but resolutely moving towards building a formidable naval capability. Its latest decision to build destroyers capable of hoisting the naval version of the US-made F-35 fighter is a major step towards developing a high degree of deterrence as well as the capacity to operate far from its territorial waters.
Equally significant is Japan’s decision to develop a military base in Djibouti, which already hosts a similar US and Chinese presence. These decisions point to Japan’s seriousness in emerging as a key security player in the Indian Ocean region.
New Delhi would do well to dovetail its plans with that of Tokyo. Such an alliance would only be mutually helpful. Japan also has a huge pool of investible capital which could be invested in the region in a judicious mesh of economic and security interests.
New Delhi has taken baby steps in this direction but falters due to an excessive concern with Beijing’s sentiments. While it must comply to a degree with Beijing’s rigid demands to avert military pressure on its borders, New Delhi must simultaneously, even brazenly, pursue a politico-economic-military alliance with Tokyo.
A strong, credible geopolitical alliance in the Indian Ocean region will be the greatest stabilising force. This could also be the best deterrent against future unsettling alliances and detrimental agreements like the ones witnessed in the Maldives and Sri Lanka.
The writer is an independent security and political risk consultant based in New Delhi
Huawei Technologies Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou as she exits the court registry following the bail hearing at British Columbia Superior Courts in Vancouver, British Columbia on December 11, 2018. Source: CTC/AFP
20th December 2018
A THIRD Canadian citizen has been detained by China fuelling speculation Beijing is using Canada to exert pressure on the United States to relent on legal charges against one of China’s leading technology companies.
Chinese security agencies detained two other Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, on Dec 10. Chinese officials have suggested in public comments that the agencies are looking into potential national security charges against the pair.
Kovrig’ and Spavor’s arrest quickly followed the detainment of Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver on Dec 8.
The United States wants to try Meng over allegations she covered up links to a subsidiary doing business with Iran, effectively breaching US sanctions.
China has denied any wrongdoing and appeared to arrest Kovrig and Spavor in direct retaliation to the arrest of the head of one of China’s biggest tech giants.
On Wednesday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told the press the arrest of a third Canadian – name currently unknown – does not appear to be related.
“The others arrested … were accused of serious crimes, problems regarding national security, intelligence, so those cases are more serious… We’re currently looking at them,” Trudeau said, as reported by CBC News.
“We’ve only got the preliminary indications … that it’s not linked to a matter of national security for the Chinese. The two situations are very different. The allegations of national security problems, even objectively, are very different from a routine case or a problem with a visa or something of that nature.”
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin (L) and Meng Wanzhou, Executive Board Director of the Chinese technology giant Huawei, attend a session of the VTB Capital Investment Forum “Russia Calling!” in Moscow, Russia October 2, 2014. Picture taken October 2, 2014. Source: Reuters/Alexander Bibik
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, said at a regularly scheduled news conference in Beijing on Wednesday that the ministry had no information on the case.
According to the Guardian, Canada’s ambassador to China, John McCallum, met Spavor on Monday, and had previously visited Kovrig.
Beijing has threatened Canada with “grave consequences” if Meng is not freed.
Trudeau has stopped short of picking up the phone and calling Chinese President Xi Jinping, claiming it is “a lot more complicated” than that. He did, however, warn that political strong-arming on the part of Beijing would be counterproductive.
“Escalation and political posturing might be satisfactory in the short term to make yourself seem like you are stomping on the table and doing something significant, but it may not contribute to the outcome we all want,” he said.
Meng is out on bail now. A court is expected to rule whether Canada will extradite her to the United States.
Lord Michael Heseltine is a veteran of politics. He has served as Deputy Prime Minister and was crucial in Margaret Thatcher’s removal from power. He now sits on the Conservative benches of the House of Lords and has strongly argued against Brexit and to remain in the European Union.
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FILE PHOTO: Police stand guard outside a copper smelter controlled by London-listed Vedanta Resources in Thoothukudi in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, India, May 28, 2018. REUTERS/Sudarshan Varadhan/File Photo
THOOTHUKUDI, India (Reuters) - Twelve of the 13 protesters killed when police opened fire on a demonstration against Vedanta’s copper smelter in Tamil Nadu in May were hit by bullets in the head or chest, and half of those were shot from behind, autopsy reports show.
Two others died after bullets pierced the sides of their heads, according to the reports produced by forensic medicine experts from several government hospitals and reviewed by Reuters. They have not been previously published.
In the case of the youngest to be killed, a bullet entered the back of 17-year-old J. Snowlin’s head and exited through her mouth, the autopsy found.
“The deceased would appear to have died of cardio-pulmonary arrest due to firearm bullet injury to the back of the neck,” forensic medicine experts who examined Snowlin’s body wrote.
When Reuters visited her family, they said they had not collected the teenager’s autopsy report. “We are continuing to exist, that’s it,” said her mother.
Indian police rules allow the use of live ammunition to quell civil unrest, but stipulate the response should be proportionate and officers should not shoot to kill. Police Standing Orders for Tamil Nadu, the state where the shootings took place, say that, when using firearms, “aim should be kept low, preferably well below the waist level, and directed against the most threatening part of the mob”.
The incident was the deadliest at an environmental protest in India in a decade. A working group of United Nations’ human rights experts in May condemned the “apparent excessive and disproportionate use of lethal force by police”.
Federal police are investigating the shootings, which took place as protesters were marching to the local government headquarters in the port city of Thoothukudi, demanding that a copper smelter controlled by London-headquartered Vedanta Resources be shut for allegedly polluting the environment.
No police officers have been arrested or charged in connection with the killings. In a statement following the incident the Tamil Nadu state government, which is responsible for the police, said: “Due to unavoidable circumstances, we had to take action to bring the situation under control.”
The Thoothukudi district administration and state police officials did not respond to emails seeking comments on the autopsy reports. Federal police investigating the deaths did not respond to requests for comment on the autopsy findings.
Vedanta did not respond to a request for comment. The company, which had no involvement in the shootings, has previously expressed regret over the deaths at the protest, which it call “absolutely unfortunate”.
Four senior police and two government officials who were present on the day told Reuters in June they were forced to fire live ammunition as the crowd turned violent and threatened a neighbouring Vedanta employees’ apartment building.
DETAIL OF DEATHS
Among the eight people killed from bullets entering their head or body from behind or the side, 40-year-old Jansi, who like many people in Tamil Nadu goes by just one name, was shot a few hundred metres away from her house in a narrow street close to Thoothukudi’s seafront. She was shot through the ear, the report into her death showed.
A bullet went through the forehead of 34-year-old Mani Rajan. “The deceased would appear to have died of penetrating injury to the brain due to the firearm bullet injury to the right side of forehead,” Mani’s autopsy report said.
The dead also included a man in his 50s, six men in their 40s, and three men in their early 20s.
FILE PHOTO: Charred vehicles are pictured near a government office, after at least 13 people were killed when police fired on protesters seeking closure of plant on environmental grounds in town of Thoothukudi in Tamil Nadu, May 24, 2018. REUTERS/Sudarshan Varadhan/File Photo
The head of the forensic science department at the Thoothukudi Medical College, where the autopsies were conducted, declined to comment, as did two of the principal examiners.
Reuters contacted 11 of the 13 families or friends of those killed, 10 of whom said they were not pursuing any legal action. One of the 11 said he was in touch with a lawyer and wanted justice, but did not elaborate further. Two of the families could not be reached for comment.
Authorities in Tamil Nadu ordered the permanent closure of the Vedanta smelter on environmental grounds immediately after the shootings at the May 22 protest. That order was overturned by a ruling from India’s green court on Dec. 15. Vedanta, controlled by billionaire Anil Agarwal, has always denied damaging the environment.
On Friday, the state high court asked the firm not to reopen the plant for another month, until it had heard an appeal from activists challenging the green court decision.
MINIMUM FORCE
The shootings are being investigated by a court-mandated commission as well as the federal police. Officials familiar with the investigations said they were not likely to conclude “any time soon”.
Fifteen police weapons were discharged in total, including three self-loading rifles (SLR), according to a state government documents submitted to the investigation commission and reviewed by Reuters.
Of 69 live bullets used, 30 were fired from the three SLRs, according to the documents. Police fired an additional four rounds from .303 rifles and 12 shots from .410 weapons.
The Police Standing Orders, an exhaustive manual on police action, recommends the use of .303 and .410 rifles as a last resort against violent crowds.
Unlike the colonial-era .303 and .410, the SLR is modern rifle capable of continuous fire, said Jacob Punnose, former police chief of the neighbouring Kerala state.
“There is no illegality per se,” he said, referring to the use of SLRs in such circumstances. “But it definitely goes against principle of minimum force.”
Reporting by Sudarshan Varadhan; Editing by Alex Richardson
In the Western world there is a constant debate about democracy. In the US the Democrats charge quite correctly that the House’s constituencies are gerrymandered against them. Then there’s the insoluble issue of the Senate’s anti-democratic bias where its numbers are tilted against the Democrats by the fact that rural, less populated states which tend to be conservative, elect two senators, just as do the Democratic-inclined, heavily populated states.
In Britain, the country is driven by the Brexit debate. A referendum was held two and a half years ago when voters were given the choice of “Remain” or “Leave”. The “Leavers” won by a small margin and the country has been in political turmoil ever since. Now with Prime Minister Theresa May’s exit plans on the rocks the debate has become vitriolic. There are calls for a new referendum to reverse the previous vote. It’s likely to happen since Mrs May has been checkmated by the European Union. The Remainers will probably win.
In Hungary, the prime minister has pushed aside democracy to take more control of the press and the judiciary, despite threats, so far empty ones, from the rest of the EU to seriously punish its government.
In France, demonstrators, some violent, have hit the streets, protesting the government’s policies that seem to favour the well to do. In fact the poorer have also been helped. But is it a responsible protest when the mass of non-violent demonstrators know that their action has attracted young hooligans who used violence- burning cars, ransacking shops and fighting the police with cobblestones?
Democracy, considered a virtue, has always had its bad associates- Hitler and Robespierre for starters.
Democracy, considered a virtue, has always had its bad associates- Hitler and Robespierre for starters
Democracy is in trouble, according to a new, incisive and broad ranging book, “Setting The People Free- The Story Of Democracy”, by Cambridge professor, John Dunn. What’s excluded from his magisterial text isn’t worth knowing. His book gives the reader everything they need to know.
As Dunn writes, democracy has lost its clarity. It’s not yet a sinking ship but it certainly has hit an iceberg.
“Representative democracy today”, he writes, “works far better as a mechanism for rejection than it can as a way of choosing together what course to follow for any length of time”.
Dunn singles out climate change. Yes, there’s a great amount of lip service to taking drastic action but, as in France, when fuel taxes were raised in order to restrict more CO2 emissions, there are massive demonstrations against it. A democratically elected government was compelled to retreat. In the US Republican voters support President Donald Trump’s policy of denial although the denials came from a time well before Trump. Dunn says that in the face of such immense challenges the record of Western democracies “has been at best uneven and at worst abominable.” Our democracies, he concludes, exist in “muted form”. At the end of his book he blames us the voters for tolerating bad practices.
Plato, who opposed the other Greek savants, his teacher, Socrates, and his pupil, Aristotle, denounced democracy. He saw it as “a presumptuous and grossly ugly idea”. He blamed the killing of Socrates on the waywardness of democratic governance.
This and other historical examples lead Dunn to argue that with democracy “it’s overwhelmingly probable that many particular outcomes will turn out to be flagrantly unjust. The idea of justice and the idea of democracy fit very precariously together”. Worse still, “It’s often sharply at odds with the requirements for the fluent operation of a capitalist economy”. In post-Soviet Russia much of the West thought democracy would come first and capitalism second. It did for a while but now under President Vladimir Putin the order has been largely reversed.
Dunn goes on to say provocatively that, “No one could readily mistake democracy for a solution to the Riddle of History”.
Nevertheless, “In its simple and unpretentious way, it has by now established a clear claim to meet a global need better than any of its competitors. It has a unique status, fusing timeliness and well-considered modesty with a claim to something very close to indispensability”.
Prime Minister Theresa May’s exit plans on the rocks the debate has become vitriolic. There are calls for a new referendum to reverse the previous vote
Having said this we are living in a disenchanted and demoralized world. Our prime purpose isn’t democracy, fighting for human rights, against climate change or for compassion towards the poor. Our lives appear to be organized around the struggle to maximize personal income.
One of both the ingredients and the result of this is to make us shortsighted and to have little sense of history. In the American case, Trump plays on the sheer ignorance of a large section of the electorate. In Britain, Nigel Farge and his United Kingdom Independence Party and friends in the Conservative Party told outright lies, now admitted, to the voters in order to win the Brexit referendum.
We sigh and take comfort from what Churchill said: “Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”.
Copyright: Jonathan Power.
U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis has abruptly announced his resignation.
Dec-21-2018
(SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.) - Without consulting his military advisors, his White House staff, Congress, or our allies, the Twitter-in-Chief announced an immediate, full withdrawal of the 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria, Tweeting “we have defeated ISIS in Syria.”
If he had consulted with his military advisors, Trump would have known that ISIS has not been defeated there. While the long fight against ISIS looks good on a map, it is yet to be decisive on the battlefield.
At least 2,500 ISIS fighters remain and it retains the capacity to continue to do damage, especially if let off the hook now. And it cedes control of Syria to Russia and Iran, and it abandons our Syrian-Kurdish allies.
One day after Trump announced the withdrawal, U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis, a stabilizing force in Trump's cabinet, abruptly announced his resignation and said Trump should pick a successor whose views align more with his own.
Why this announcement now? Is Trump acceding to Turkey’s request/demand to cease supporting the Syrian-Kurds by withdrawing from Syria? Or is Trump attempting to divert media attention away from his legal problems? Or is this Trump’s revenge for no money for a wall in the budget? Or all of the preceding?
This is yet another example of Trump’s ill-advised decisions via Tweet.
By Souad Mekhennet and
Greg Miller December 21 at 7:01 PM
Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in 2011. (Virginia Mayo/AP)
Turkish police work inside the Saudi consulate general’s residence in Istanbul on Oct. 17, two weeks after Khashoggi entered the Saudi Consulate and never left. (Chris McGrath/Getty Images)
Jamal Khashoggi had been in the United States for only a few months when the forces he had fled in Saudi Arabia made clear that he would never fully escape.
He was at a friend’s home in suburban Virginia in October 2017 when his phone lit up with an incoming call from Riyadh. On the line was Saud al-Qahtani, a feared lieutenant of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The royal heir and his henchman were at that point in the early stages of a brutal crackdown in the kingdom — arresting rivals, torturing enemies and silencing critics. Khashoggi had previously been banned from writing or even tweeting, but fear that worse could be in store had prompted him to seek refuge in the United States.
Qahtani was uncharacteristically amiable on the call. He told Khashoggi that public comments praising Saudi reforms, including a decision to allow women to drive, had pleased the crown prince.
He urged Khashoggi to “keep writing and boasting” about Mohammed’s achievements. While the conversation was cordial, the subtext was clear: Khashoggi no longer lived under Saudi rule, but the country’s most powerful royal was monitoring his every word.
Khashoggi reacted with a combination of the nerve and trepidation that would define the remaining months of his life. He challenged Qahtani about the plight of activists he knew had been imprisoned in the kingdom, according to a friend who witnessed the exchange. But even as he did so, the friend said, “I saw how Jamal’s hand was shaking while holding the phone.”
[After journalist vanishes, focus shifts to young prince’s ‘dark’ and bullying side]
A year later, Khashoggi, 59, would be dead, and Mohammed and Qahtani would be implicated by U.S. intelligence agencies in his killing, which was carried out by a team of assassins dispatched from Riyadh.
The crime has roiled relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia, exposed the ruthless side of a crown prince who was supposed to represent the kingdom’s enlightened future, and revealed the extent to which the Trump administration prioritizes protecting an oil-rich ally over humanitarian concerns.
After initially warning of "severe punishment" for the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, President Trump issued a statement defending Saudi Arabia. (JM Rieger/The Washington Post)
The case has also taken on the dimensions of a global cause. Khashoggi, a contributing columnist for The Washington Post, was a writer of modest influence beyond the Middle East when he was alive. In death, he has become a symbol of a broader struggle for human rights, as well as a chilling example of the savagery with which autocratic regimes silence voices of dissent.
Khashoggi’s life and work, particularly in his final year, were inevitably more complicated than can be captured in that idealized frame. The complete truth about his fate remains elusive in large measure because of a determined Saudi effort to obscure events — an effort that included relaying false information to executives at The Post in the days after Khashoggi’s death.
This account of his final 18 months, which reveals new details about Khashoggi’s interactions with Saudi officials, his activities over the last year of his life as an exile and his killing, is based on interviews with dozens of associates, friends and officials from countries including Saudi Arabia and the United States as well as Turkey, where Khashoggi was killed and dismembered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2.
Underestimating Saudi Arabia
Khashoggi was an advocate for reform in his country, but neither saw himself as a dissident nor believed in bringing radical change to a nation that has operated for the past eight decades as an absolute monarchy.
He relished his newfound freedoms in the United States, and the attention his writing got from a Western audience, but often resisted appeals from associates to be more forceful in his criticism of the kingdom. He was by many accounts depressed by the separation from his country and the strain that his departure and work placed on his family.
Even in exile, Khashoggi remained loyal to Saudi Arabia and reluctant to sever ties to the royal court. In September 2017, at the same time he was embarking on a new role as opinion columnist for The Washington Post, he was pursuing up to $2 million in funding from the Saudi government for a think tank that he proposed to run in Washington, according to documents reviewed by the paper that appear to be part of a proposal he submitted to the Saudi ministry of information.
President Trump and first lady Melania Trump arrive in Riyadh on May 20, 2017. Prince Khaled bin Salman, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, is at center. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the Pentagon on March 22, 2018. (Cliff Owen/AP)
President Trump and first lady Melania Trump arrive in Riyadh on May 20, 2017. Prince Khaled bin Salman, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, is at center. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the Pentagon on March 22, 2018. (Cliff Owen/AP)
Khashoggi also sent messages to the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Khaled bin Salman — the brother of the crown prince — expressing his loyalty to the kingdom and reporting on some of his activities in the United States, according to copies reviewed by The Post.
In one case, Khashoggi told the ambassador that he had been contacted by a former FBI agent working on behalf of families of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks — in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi. He said he would go forward with the meeting and emphasize “the innocence of my country and its leadership.”
But in the conspiracy-driven climate of Middle East politics, Khashoggi came under mounting suspicion because of his writing as well as associations he cultivated over many years with perceived enemies of Riyadh.
[Crown prince is ‘chief of the tribe’ in a cowed House of Saud]
Among Khashoggi’s friends in the United States were individuals with real or imagined affiliations with the Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood, and an Islamic advocacy organization, the Center on American-Islamic Relations, regarded warily for its support of the public uprisings of the Arab Spring. Khashoggi cultivated ties with senior officials in the Turkish government, also viewed with deep distrust by the rulers in Saudi Arabia.
After leaving the kingdom, Khashoggi sought to secure funding and support for an assortment of ideas that likely would have riled Middle East monarchs, including plans to create an organization that would publicly rank Arab nations each year by how they performed against basic metrics of freedom and democracy.
Perhaps most problematic for Khashoggi were his connections to an organization funded by Saudi Arabia’s regional nemesis, Qatar. Text messages between Khashoggi and an executive at Qatar Foundation International show that the executive, Maggie Mitchell Salem, at times shaped the columns he submitted to The Washington Post, proposing topics, drafting material and prodding him to take a harder line against the Saudi government. Khashoggi also appears to have relied on a researcher and translator affiliated with the organization, which promotes Arabic-language education in the United States.
Khashoggi, right, is seen in Manama, Bahrain, on Dec. 15, 2014, after a news conference to launch a pan-Arab broadcasting company. (Mohammed al-Shaikh/AFP/Getty Images)
Editors at The Post’s opinion section, which is separate from the newsroom, said they were unaware of these arrangements, or his effort to secure Saudi funding for a think tank. “The proof of Jamal’s independence is in his journalism,” Fred Hiatt, editorial page editor of the Post, said in a statement. “Jamal had every opportunity to curry favor and to make life more comfortable for himself, but he chose exile and — as anyone reading his work can see — could not be tempted or corrupted.”
A former U.S. diplomat who had known Khashoggi since 2002, Salem said that any assistance she provided Khashoggi was from a friend who sought to help him succeed in the United States. She noted that Khashoggi’s English abilities were limited, and said that the foundation did not pay Khashoggi nor seek to influence him on behalf of Qatar.
“He and I talked about issues of the day as people who had come together, caring about the same part of the world,” Salem said. “Jamal was never an employee, never a consultant, never anything to [the foundation]. Never.”
It is not clear that the Saudi government knew of Khashoggi’s ties to the Qatar foundation, although the kingdom routinely engages in surveillance of dissidents abroad.
To friends and family members, Khashoggi’s connections were indicative of his intellectual curiosity and disregard for rigid national, religious and ideological boundaries. He traveled constantly, attended dozens of conferences each year, and developed long-standing friendships with people whose opinions were at odds with his own.
Nevertheless, Khashoggi knew that his writings and associations carried risks. He told friends and colleagues repeatedly that he would be imprisoned if he ever reentered Saudi Arabia, and spoke often of his concern for his four children, including a son who remained in the kingdom and had faced intermittent harassment from the authorities there.
In the end, Khashoggi underestimated what Saudi Arabia was capable of as he entered the consulate in Istanbul to collect paperwork needed to remarry and begin rebuilding a personal life that had experienced some turmoil during his exile.
“His biggest fear was being imprisoned but not being killed,” said the friend who witnessed the Qahtani call, who requested anonymity for his own security. “He had never thought of that.”
'Lord of the Flies'
The October 2017 phone call was part of a long series of interactions between the Saudi columnist and Qahtani, a 40-year-old veteran of the Saudi Air Force who emerged from a decade of maneuvering in the royal court as one of the crown prince’s closest advisers.
A Twitter profile photo of Saud al-Qahtani, an adviser to the crown prince. (Obtained by The Washington Post)
Qahtani was given broad authority to protect the image of the crown prince, widely known by his initials, “MBS.” It was an assignment that involved flooding social media platforms with propaganda and using espionage capabilities to monitor critics. At times it also meant banning those perceived as being disloyal — including Khashoggi — from writing or posting comments online. Under Mohammed and Qahtani, many activists have also been imprisoned for their dissent.
With more than a million followers on Twitter, Qahtani is derisively known as “Lord of the Flies,” a reference to the swarms of social media operatives — “electronic flies” — that descend on perceived adversaries of the kingdom and Mohammed.
Even before Mohammed began making his move to claim the title of crown prince, Qahtani was scouring the private sector for tools that could aide him in his efforts of suppression. Emails released by WikiLeaks show that someone using Qahtani’s identity pursued spyware capabilities from an Italian company as early as 2012.
A lawsuit filed last month by a Saudi exile in Canada, Omar Abdulaziz, accused the Saudi government of monitoring his text message exchanges with Khashoggi by using Israeli software designed to secretly control an ordinary smartphone, turning it into a surveillance device against its owner.
Qahtani was working to mute Khashoggi’s voice as early as 2016.
The journalist, a native of Medina, had an eventful but often bumpy career over several decades in Saudi Arabia. Drawn to radical causes in his early years, Khashoggi traveled to Afghanistan in the 1980s as a correspondent where he interviewed Osama bin Laden and posed for a picture holding a military rifle.
Khashoggi was fired twice as editor of Saudi Arabia’s Al-Watan newspaper because he was seen as agitating against the government. But he was also an insider in the royal court. In between those editing stints, Khashoggi worked as an adviser to Prince Turki Al-Faisal, the former head of Saudi intelligence, when the prince served as ambassador to the United Kingdom and then the United States.
The first major clash between Qahtani and Kashoggi came in late 2016, when the writer was working as a columnist for the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper. At a time when Mohammed and others were celebrating the election of Donald Trump, who promised a far warmer relationship with Riyadh than President Barack Obama had pursued, Khashoggi was more cautious, warning in mid-November 2016 on Twitter that the Saudis should be wary of the untested American president.
Shortly thereafter, while Khashoggi was attending a conference in Qatar, Qahtani called to inform him that he was “not allowed to tweet, not allowed to write, not allowed to talk,” said a Khashoggi associate who, like others, also requested anonymity for security reasons.
Qahtani added, “You can’t do anything anymore — you’re done.”
Khashoggi’s ban over the ensuing eight months coincided with a period of intense intrigue in Riyadh.
As Mohammed maneuvered to consolidate power, his enforcer began building his capabilities, including so-called “tiger teams” tasked with carrying out overseas abductions and the interrogation of prisoners. It was hard to reconcile such operations with the innocuous name of Qahtani’s department: the Center for Studies and Media Affairs.
The power grab
Crown Prince Mohammad bin Nayef is seen at the U.N. in September 2016, months before he relinquished the title to his much younger cousin. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
In April 2017, Khashoggi left Saudi Arabia for three weeks to stay in London with a Saudi businessman and fellow former adviser to Prince Turki, Nawaf Obaid, who had had his own falling out with the royal court. The two talked about Khashoggi’s desire to move to the United States, according to a person familiar with their discussions.
But Qahtani surfaced again, calling Khashoggi in London to tell him that all would be forgiven if he returned to Riyadh. It was part of Qahtani’s “hot-cold” handling of Khashoggi, the person said, alternating between being menacing and reassuring.
In June 2017, Mohammed and his supporters carried out an extraordinary power grab, detaining the designated crown prince Mohammed bin Nayef, a 57-year-old grandson of the founding Saudi monarch. He emerged from his detainment to issue a humiliating public pledge of loyalty to his much younger cousin, Mohammed, relinquishing the title of crown prince.
The turbulence added to Khashoggi’s fears. In June, as Mohammed was plotting, Khashoggi made his exit, packing his bags, locking up his house and boarding a flight to Washington.
His departure triggered a further attempt to secure his obedience. This time it came not from Qahtani but the Saudi information minister, who called Khashoggi in August to tell him that the writing ban had been lifted and that the government might be prepared to give him money to set up a pro-Saudi think tank in Washington.
The minister, Awwad Alawwad, the former Saudi ambassador to Germany, also relayed a potentially unsettling request. “The crown prince would like to see you,” the minister said, according to a Khashoggi colleague who overheard the call. Saudi officials deny that the minister mentioned Mohammed.
Always conflicted about his relationship with the royals, Khashoggi explored the think tank offer, and even submitted a proposal, according to documents reviewed by The Post. His plan described an entity that would be called the “Saudi Research Council” in Washington, with an initial budget of $1 million to $2 million.
The proposal outlined ideas such as cultivating relationships with other influential organizations, but it seemed aimed at shoring up the Saudi reputation abroad. It notes, for example, that “an irresponsible media” had unfairly maligned the kingdom over alleged connections to terrorist groups for many years, and that the council could work on behalf of Riyadh “to regain its positive role and image.”
The proposal also outlined a plan to form a team for the purpose of “monitoring potential negative news.” The team would follow emerging story lines and social media “that might explode against the kingdom” then “notify the ministry in Riyadh.”
The prospect of such a Saudi-friendly endeavor appealed to members of Khashoggi’s family who at times faced travel restrictions and other hardships imposed by Riyadh in apparent retaliation for his work. Khashoggi’s eldest son, Salah, a banker in Saudi Arabia, and other family members urged him to pursue the think tank plan.
But Khashoggi was also being prodded by others to reject Riyadh’s entreaties, and it’s not clear that the ministry of information was ever prepared to proceed.
Khashoggi appears to have reached a fateful decision in this period to turn further away from the only country he ever considered home. His marriage subsequently disintegrated and his eldest son cut off contact with him for months, friends and associates said.Khashoggi’s children declined to be interviewed for this article.
In conversations, Khashoggi seemed alternately despondent and invigorated, proclaiming to one friend: “I am a free man, and I am going to change Saudi Arabia.”
Raising his voice
Khashoggi’s arrival in Washington came at an auspicious time for The Post, which was seeking writers for an online section called Global Opinions. One of its editors, Karen Attiah, reached out to Khashoggi to ask him to write on the forces roiling Saudi Arabia.
On Sept. 18, 2017, Khashoggi’s first column for The Post appeared with a stark opening line: “When I speak of the fear, intimidation, arrests and public shaming of intellectuals and religious leaders who dare to speak their minds, and then I tell you that I’m from Saudi Arabia, are you surprised?”
The column was also a declaration of his own independence. “I have left my home, my family and my job, and I am raising my voice,” he wrote. “I want you to know that Saudi Arabia has not always been as it is now. We Saudis deserve better.”
[Read Jamal Khashoggi’s columns]
To hear such unflinching words from a Saudi writer was rare. The fact that they appeared on such a prominent platform would likely have been unnerving to those around the crown prince.
Mohammed had largely succeeded in Washington at casting himself as a leader who would bring Western-style reforms to Saudi Arabia. He had cultivated such a close relationship with the Trump administration that he routinely traded messages and phone calls with Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, outside traditional diplomatic channels.
Khashoggi was now writing for a publication that could undercut the crown prince’s narrative in Washington. It was less than two weeks later that Khashoggi got the call that made his hands tremble.
Khashoggi did at times praise the crown prince, crediting him for reforms, including allowing movie theaters to open in the kingdom. But he also seemed to grow more bold in his criticisms.
The Saudi crown prince chats with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Group of 20 summit in Buenos Aires on Nov. 30, 2018. (Amilcar Orfali/Getty Images)
In November, Khashoggi compared Mohammed to Russian President Vladimir Putin just as a brutal new crackdown began in the Saudi capital. Hundreds of wealthy Saudis, including members of the royal family, were detained at the Ritz-Carlton hotel, many of them reportedly beaten while being interrogated, accused of corruption and forced to surrender billions of dollars in assets. Khashoggi criticized Saudi Arabia’s policies in Lebanon, its bombing campaign in Yemen, its blockade of Qatar, its repression of women and its opposition to a free press.
Khashoggi was never a staff employee of the Post, and was paid about $500 per piece for the 20 columns he wrote over the course of the year. He lived in an apartment near Tysons Corner in Fairfax County that he had purchased while working at the Saudi Embassy a decade earlier.
As the months went on, he struggled with bouts of loneliness and stumbled into new relationships. He secretly married an Egyptian woman, Hanan El Atr, in a ceremony in suburban Virginia, though neither filled out paperwork to make it legal, and the relationship quickly fizzled.
Khashoggi pursued other ventures. Among them was a plan to create an organization called Democracy for the Arab World Now. He sought out financial backers and turned for organizational help to Nihad Awad, the head of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The organization has worked to ensure the fair treatment of Muslims in the United States, but its support for the uprisings of the Arab Spring led Saudi authorities to see it as an adversary.
Khashoggi cultivated friendships with people with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization that he joined when he was a college student in the United States but subsequently backed away from. The organization is banned by autocratic regimes in the Middle East.
Khashoggi also appears to have accepted significant help with his columns. Salem, the executive at the Qatar foundation, reviewed his work in advance and in some instances appears to have proposed language, according to a voluminous collection of messages obtained by The Post.
In early August, Salem prodded Khashoggi to write about Saudi Arabia’s alliances “from DC to Jerusalem to rising right wing parties across Europe...bringing an end to the liberal world order that challenges their abuses at home.”
Khashoggi expressed misgivings about such a strident tone, then asked, “So do you have time to write it?”
“I’ll try,” she replied, although she went on to urge him to “try a draft” himself incorporating sentences that she had sent him by text. A column reflecting their discussion appeared in the Post on Aug. 7. Khashoggi appears to have used some of Salem’s suggestions, though it largely tracks ideas that he expressed in their exchange over the encrypted app WhatsApp.
Other texts in the 200-page trove indicate that Salem’s organization paid a researcher who did work for Khashoggi. The foundation is an offshoot of a larger Qatar-based organization. Khashoggi also relied on a translator who worked at times for the Qatari embassy and the foundation.
Hiatt, The Post’s editorial page editor, said that Khashoggi’s writings show no attempt to favor the Qatar position. “He doesn’t attack Saudi Arabia’s campaign against Qatar, as Qatar might have wanted,” Hiatt said. “Nor does he embrace MBS’s reforms, as the crown prince might have wanted. On the contrary: he courageously stands up for Saudi dissidents — and for the cause of freedom throughout the region — while trying to nudge the reforms in a constructive direction.”
Khashoggi and Salem seemed to understand how his association with a Qatar-funded entity could be perceived, reminding one another to keep the arrangement “discreet.” He voiced concern that his family could be vulnerable.
As she reviewed a draft of the Aug. 7 column, she accused him of pulling punches. “You moved off topic and seem to excuse Riyadh...ITS HIGHLY PROBLEMATIC.” The next day he wrote back that he had submitted the column, saying, “They’re going to hang me when it comes out.”
A syringe
This image taken from CCTV video shows Khashoggi entering the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2, 2018. (Hurriyet/via AP)
By July 2018, the Saudi crown prince had commanded subordinates to find a way to bring the exiled columnist back to the kingdom, according to intercepted communications examined by U.S. intelligence officials.
They saw an opportunity in late September, when Khashoggi entered the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul seeking paperwork he needed for a marriage to a Turkish woman. He was told to return the following week. Khashoggi said he would be back the following Tuesday.
After attending a weekend conference in London, Khashoggi returned to Istanbul early in the morning on Oct. 2 and called the consulate to say he would be there by 1 p.m. He met his fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, for breakfast and told her of his plan. Concerned about him going alone, she skipped obligations at a university in Istanbul to accompany him. As he left his phones with her and went inside, it was the last time she ever saw him.
Several Saudi teams were already in place, having arrived on a pair of jets from Riyadh. The operatives had met with Qahtani before leaving, according to Saudi officials. Assigned to the team was Maher Mutreb, a Mohammed bodyguard who had worked at the Saudi embassy in London at the same time as Khashoggi.
What happened inside might never have emerged were it not for listening devices planted in the Saudi consulate by Turkish intelligence. The recordings span several days and capture operatives discussing in advance of Khashoggi’s arrival their plans to subdue and kill him, according to Western intelligence officials.
Khashoggi seemed to realize quickly that he was in danger. A member of the team asked whether he would take tea, and Khashoggi replied yes with an edge in his voice that made it clear that he sensed that this ritual act of politeness presaged something sinister, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified material.
A member of the team informed Khashoggi that he was going back to Saudi Arabia, according to a Western official who said that for a moment Khashoggi seems to have believed that he was going to be drugged and abducted. The Saudi team, however, brought a syringe packed with enough sedative to be lethal, the officials said.
The rest of the recording suggests there was no intent to take Khashoggi alive, multiple officials said. It captures the writer gasping for air in a physical struggle that gives way to silence. The horror resumes with the sound of an electric motor, presumably a saw that a special member of the team — a crime scene expert from the Saudi Ministry of Interior — used to dismember Khashoggi’s body.
Saudi officials maintain that the team did not bring a saw but used implements found at the consulate, citing the statements that the suspects have given authorities.
Khashoggi’s body has not been recovered. Saudi officials said that the killers entrusted Khashoggi’s remains to an accomplice in Turkey. Turkish authorities said the Saudis have yet to provide any evidence or identify this supposed individual.
The publisher and the ambassador
The media gathers outside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 15, 2018. (Chris McGrath/Getty Images)
Khashoggi’s disappearance, reported to Turkish authorities by Cengiz after she had waited outside the consulate for more than three hours, set off a frantic search for clues in Istanbul and Washington.
At The Post, publisher Fred Ryan appealed for help from senior Trump administration officials at the White House and State Department. Ryan also drafted a letter to Mohammed, delivered via diplomatic channels, the day after Khashoggi disappeared.
Trump officials were responsive during the initial days after the writer’s disappearance. Then, suddenly, the administration’s willingness to engage seemed to evaporate. It was as if Mohammed’s ardent backers understood, perhaps from early intelligence reports, that Khashoggi would not be found alive and that what they faced was no longer a case of a missing journalist but a looming diplomatic crisis.
Ryan’s attempts to get information from the Saudi government were met with denials and falsehoods.
After days of requests, Khaled, the Saudi ambassador and brother of the crown prince, agreed to meet with Ryan at The Post publisher’s Georgetown home. He arrived around 9 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 7, five days after Khashoggi disappeared.
The ambassador indicated that he had been gathering information from Riyadh and that Saudi Arabia did not regard Khashoggi as a threat. “Jamal has always been honest,” he said. “We have never perceived him as being an asset of [a hostile country] or anyone else.”
The ambassador proceed to make a series of assertions that defied logic and were contradicted by details emerging from Istanbul.
Ryan asked about reports that Saudi planes had flown into and out of Istanbul around the time of Khashoggi’s disappearance, pressing the ambassador on the presence of any Saudi aircraft. The ambassador responded categorically, saying that such reports were “baseless” when, in fact, such flights had taken place and the teams had flown back to Saudi Arabia within hours of Khashoggi’s death.
Asked to provide evidence backing up Saudi Arabia’s claims that Khashoggi had departed the consulate safely, the ambassador said that video cameras at the compound “weren’t recording” because of technical problems.
Ryan was incredulous. “You can walk around the block here and you will appear on a dozen video cameras,” he said motioning to the surrounding neighborhood. “I don’t understand this.” Saudi authorities have since concluded that the consulate cameras were intentionally disabled.
Ryan questioned the ambassador about other Saudi claims that seemed riddled with gaping holes of logic. Why would Khashoggi have exited through the consulate back door, as some had suggested, when his fiance was waiting out front? Why would he deviate from what he had done just days earlier, when he entered and left through the same door?
The ambassador was adamant. Allegations of Saudi involvement were “baseless and ridiculous,” he said, noting that Saudi investigators had already arrived in Istanbul and questioned employees at the consulate. “It’s impossible that this would be covered up and we wouldn’t know about it,” he said.
In a statement Friday, Saud Kabli, the director of communications at the Saudi embassy, said, “Nothing the Ambassador shared with Mr. Ryan in their conversation was an attempt to mislead. The information provided was the best information we had at that time. Unfortunately, that information has since proved to be false.”
The conversation concluded after an hour. Ryan ended by saying that if Khashoggi were killed or abducted by Saudi Arabia it would be “the most depraved and oppressive act against a journalist in modern history.”
Recalling the meeting in an interview, Ryan said that “overwhelming evidence has emerged indicating that virtually everything they told us was false.”
Saudi Arabia has detained 21 people in connection with Khashoggi’s killing, and removed five senior officials — including Qahtani — from their jobs. Saudi officials have continued to deny that the crown prince was involved. Though the CIA has concluded with medium to high confidence that Mohammed ordered the operation, President Trump has sought to insulate the crown prince, saying “maybe he did, maybe he didn’t.”
Hatice Cengiz, Khashoggi’s fiancee, attends a memorial service in Istanbul on Nov. 11, 2018. (Chris McGrath/Getty Images)
Turkish intelligence officials have identified Qahtani as the mastermind and indicated that he was the recipient of a message from a member of the kill team during the operation informing him that the “deed” had been done.
Saudi officials suggested that Qahtani created the crisis by driving Khashoggi from the kingdom, only to see him gain a more prominent platform for his criticism abroad. Qahtani then hatched the plot to silence Khashoggi in an effort to avoid the wrath of the crown prince, a theory that has the virtue from the Saudi perspective of shielding the royal heir from blame.
U.S. intelligence agencies tracked a flurry of messages between Mohammed and Qahtani in the hours before and after Khashoggi was killed. The Post was shown purported copies of those messages, texts that centered on mundane matters including a solar energy program and discussion of remarks by a foreign official. It was not possible to establish the authenticity of the documents.
Associates of Khashoggi draw little distinction between the crown prince and his enforcer. “Qahtani has been the source of all evil” for Khashoggi, said a friend of the journalist. “A thug. A liar. A bastard.” But each time Qahtani targeted Khashoggi, the associate said, “it’s understood who is telling him to do it.”
On Oct. 3, one day after Khashoggi’s death, while his fate remained uncertain, his researcher contacted the Post to say that he had a draft of a column that Khashoggi had begun writing before his disappearance. It was published two weeks later.
In it, Khashoggi lamented that “Arab governments have been given free rein to continue silencing the media at an increasing rate,” and that the region was “facing its own version of an Iron Curtain, imposed not by external actors but through domestic forces vying for power.”
“We need to provide a platform for Arab voices,” he said.
Julie Tate and Zakaria Zakaria contributed to this story.
BY ASHLEY JACKSON
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