In Welcome Week, before term starts formally next week, our students had the chance to discuss the film The Dissident with journalists Jonathan Rugman and Ali Hashem. The Dissident is a documentary film released in 2020, directed by Bryan Fogel. It tries to explain the assassination of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to get documents allowing him to marry his fiancé, was dismembered, and his parts were removed in a truck. This opened up questions about what kind of rule the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman has in mind if he is in power for the next 50 years. But it opened up wider questions about how Saudi Arabia manages relations in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and how countries outside the region should deal with Saudi Arabia.
Both Rugman and Hashem put Khashoggi’s killing within the context of patterns across the region. The Arab Spring went wrong and now many regimes demand a black and white relationship with their people: support us, or be our enemies. This puts journalists under pressure. Being independent and having freedom of expression is now difficult. In The Dissident Khashoggi says his journalism is guided by the goals of objectivity, credibility, and neutrality. That is precisely what the leaders of Saudi Arabia and several other states in the region feel is a threat to them.
Khashoggi was himself in transition. He didn’t see himself as a dissident because he loved Saudi Arabia and had been part of the regime. But suddenly not an inch of grey was allowed. Khashoggi was writing from within a grey space because he supported Saudi women being allowed to drive and was critical of Saudi Arabia’s dispute with Qatar and war with Yemen. His killing set an example to reinforce that no grey is permitted in the kingdom. The fact Khashoggi’s reporting was far from radical meant he might get a large audience, and for a leader with thin skin this added to the sense of being threatened.
This has made it a lethal risk to challenge Saudi leaders’ narrative from within the country. Some Saudis living outside the country could say things online, on social media, but they would face opposition too.
The assassination attempt by Russia on the Skripals in the UK only reinforced a context in which danger seemed normal and widespread.
This was a reminder that political acts become acts of communication. Instead of simply allowing agents to gun down Khashoggi in a street, his death in a consulate – in a city that historically has bridged East and West – had symbolic value. It showed Saudi Arabia could silence its critics. It might have been done clumsily, but the basic fact of the assassination remained. Saudi leaders must have calculated that any reputational damage was less significant than that symbolism.
This then creates a communication dilemma for Western leaders when dealing with Saudi Arabia. To prioritise human rights over commercial interests? To prioritise commercial interests over strategic interests in the region?
We also learnt of the role of hacking, software, social media mobs and other techniques used by Saudi Arabian figures to damage the reputation of those who opposed them. This is not going away, and a real challenge for journalists to report.
Thanks to my colleague Adam Lerner for organising the event, and his dog Moose for making an appearance on screen. We encourage you all to read Rugman’s book The Killing in the Consulate and to follow Hashem’s reporting in the region.