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Jamal Khashoggi is dead,
but his political vision lives on
(Osman
Orsal/Reuters)
A year ago, Jamal
Khashoggi — a Saudi commentator and dissident living in de facto exile —
entered his nation’s consulate in Istanbul, never to return.
The months since Khashoggi’s abduction and brutal killing by a Saudi hit
squad have brought great uproar but insufficient justice. A handful of
Saudi officials were indicted and punished by authorities in Riyadh for
orchestrating a supposedly rogue operation. But U.S. intelligence officials
believe Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had direct knowledge of the
mission targeting Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributor. The Saudi royal
denies the allegation and, with the support of President
Trump and his allies, has been mostly rehabilitated on the world
stage.
But the memory of
Khashoggi’s life and work endures. To honor the anniversary of his chilling
death, my colleagues at The Post’s Opinions section commissioned pieces on
Khashoggi, his political views and the regime that sought to snuff them
out. They underscore the legacy of a writer
whose quest for freedom, democracy and tolerance didn’t end in the torture
chamber of a consulate.
Khashoggi was hardly a
fringe figure. He was born into privilege and first became known to Western
journalists as a prominent Saudi author and editor with connections to the kingdom’s
princely elites. He was an insider, not a dissident.
Over time, though, he
came to espouse beliefs at odds with the court in Riyadh and those in most
of the Arab world’s other monarchies: an embrace of political
liberalization, a hope for the opening of space for democratic rights and
an interest in the ideas of political Islam. The upheavals of the
pro-democracy uprisings in 2011 — and the crackdowns and conflicts that
followed — created a new generation of Arab exiles. Khashoggi’s relative
fame in Saudi Arabia and desire for reform ultimately led him to join their
ranks.
Khashoggi’s semiregular
column at The Post, which often took aim at Mohammed, made him a target. He
opposed the Saudi-led intervention in
Yemen, a pet project of the crown prince. And, while not rejecting
outright the ambitious royal’s plans to modernize and reform Saudi Arabia,
Khashoggi stood against the crown prince’s persecution of critics at home
and attacks on Islamist political parties across the region.
“The Saudi monarchy
might claim to be forward-thinking with its Vision 2030 modernization plan
and efforts to court Western leaders,” wrote Hala Al-Dosari, a
Saudi dissident and writer, who pointed also to the arrest of a number of
female civil society activists under the crown prince’s watch. “In reality,
however, it has simply institutionalized a centuries-old monarchic legacy
of violence, disenfranchisement and repression. Jamal’s brutal murder and
the torture of female activists have brought this all to light.”
But Khashoggi wasn’t
exactly a revolutionary. “For the dissident Arab communities in exile and
in the region, he offered an integral element that had been missing since
the fall of the Arab Spring,” noted Mohamed Soltan, an
Egyptian American activist. “Unlike many other dissidents, Jamal had
experience championing reforms from within circles of power. He spoke often
of the ways good people brought about positive change from within faulty
systems.”
“Unless Islamists and
liberals are able to agree on the relationship between majority rule and
individual rights, we will never be able to coexist peacefully — and
ultimately will achieve neither majority rule nor individual rights,” wrote Ezzedine C. Fishere,
a visiting professor at Dartmouth College. “Dictators will be able to
continue justifying their authoritarianism by arguing it is needed to
maintain peace between two camps who can’t agree on the fundamentals of
peaceful coexistence. And they will be right.”
In his gentle ripostes
to the ruling authorities of his own country, Khashoggi hoped to prove the
dictators wrong. Even in death, he has. In various Arab countries this
year, people power movements have
once more threatened the authoritarian status quo, no matter the
powerful forces arrayed against them.
“The Saudis and the UAE
gave billions to prop up Sudan’s military
regime in the hope it would withstand a mass protest movement, only to see
the generals strike a deal for a three-year transition
to democracy,” noted a Post editorial.
“Algeria, too, has seen the rise of a powerful democracy movement, and
Tunisia is holding a robustly competitive presidential election. Recently,
protests erupted in Egypt, where another military
regime has received billions in Saudi subsidies, after a dissident
businessman’s message went viral.”
Yet that’s a cold
comfort. That Khashoggi, a figure with international clout and
friends in high places, could be killed with such brazenness horrified
onlookers and exiled dissidents elsewhere. Iyad el-Baghdadi, another Arab
activist in exile, sees Riyadh’s silencing of Khashoggi as part of a
broader squeezing of dissent, one that has extended deep into online
networks as well.
“When Jamal chose exile
in the summer of 2017, it was a few weeks ahead of a wave of mass arrests that targeted
dissidents and intellectuals,” wrote el-Baghdadi. “There
was one thing that many of the victims had in common: large social media
followings. More than targeting the dissidents themselves, the arrests were
part of a plan to degrade and conquer the last remaining open, inclusive
Arab public sphere.”
Nor has it helped that
Western governments, especially the Trump administration, have placed their
strategic interests in allying with Saudi Arabia ahead of a principled
moral stand about the kingdom’s behavior. Khashoggi’s memory, argue his
friends and supporters, will be a perennial thorn in the side of regional
realpolitik.
“Jamal, both in his
long struggle to bring the perfidies of the Saudi regime to light and in
the memory of his horrific death, will always symbolize the perseverance of
the deep rebellion among Muslims against their dynastic dictators,” wrote Turkish columnist Asli
Aydintasbas. “Western leaders might continue to choose to work with
these despots. But Jamal’s example will always remind us that one day, they
will have to deal with the restless reality of the region’s people, too.
The dictators might protect Western interests, but they cannot rescue the
Western soul.”
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