We still do not know what has happened to Jamal Khashoggi. The Saudi journalist, who has contributed numerous articles to The Washington Post’s Global Opinions section, has not been seen since he entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Tuesday afternoon to finalize papers regarding a divorce. Khashoggi is a prominent commentator, familiar to a generation of Middle East correspondents seeking insight into the intrigues of Riyadh. In recent years, he had turned into a critic of the kingdom’s leadership and relocated to Washington in a kind of self-imposed exile.
Turkish authorities insist that Khashoggi, 59, is being held in the consulate, as do his friends. “We have talked with some Turkish authorities and the police,” Turan Kislakci, an associate of Khashoggi, told my colleagues. “I think 100 percent that he is inside.”
But Saudi officials deny they have detained the journalist, claiming in an emailed statement to my colleagues that Khashoggi is not in the building.
“We were going to marry this week,” said Khashoggi’s fiancee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, to my colleagues in Istanbul on Wednesday. She added that her spouse-to-be had been concerned about going to the consulate. “Of course he was worried. How comfortable can one be if he is not liked by his country? »
“We have been unable to reach Jamal today and are very concerned about where he may be,” said The Post’s international opinions editor, Eli Lopez, in a statement Thursday. “We are monitoring the situation closely, trying to gather more information. It would be unfair and outrageous if he has been detained for his work as a journalist and commentator. »
In Washington, analysts and former diplomats who are generally supportive of Saudi Arabia expressed their disquiet. “The only logical explanations are that the Saudi government is either keeping him in the consulate building or has kidnapped him and taken him to Saudi Arabia,” wrote Elliott Abrams, a former official in the George W. Bush administration. He warned that “the reputation of the current Saudi government will be harmed irreparably.”
Such detentions have become more conspicuous under the kingdom’s young crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. Since taking de facto power in a shake-up last year, Mohammed has detained feminist activists and billionaire magnates alike. Saudi authorities even briefly held the sitting Lebanese prime minister in a Riyadh hotel last year. All of this came as Mohammed promised to open up Saudi Arabia’s conservative society and wean itself off of oil dependence.
Post columnist Jason Rezaian, a journalist who spent many months in unjust Iranian detention, puzzled over the nature of Mohammed bin Salman’s reforms. “Troubling developments from the community of activists inside the country, however, tell a vastly different story. Those pushing for change — whether they are women’s rights activists, journalists or ethnic minorities — report being systematically harassed by the authorities,” Rezaian wrote. “With every supposed reform comes a wave of fresh arrests, prison sentences and increasingly repressive behavior.”
The crown prince, Rezaian noted, is a frequent target of Khashoggi’s columns. “At each turning point . . . Jamal has offered readers of The Post insightful commentary and sharp criticism about the seemingly impenetrable country, » he wrote.
The geopolitical backdrop to Khashoggi’s disappearance is worth considering. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has presided over a sweeping purge of the country’s civil society and government ever since a botched coup attempt in 2016. Yet Turkey has also become something of a sanctuary for Arab dissidents of various stripes.
In 2013, after a military coup unseated Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and brutally crushed his Muslim Brotherhood, a host of Egyptian dissidents and Islamist politicians took up residence in Istanbul. Erdogan remains a staunch critic of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, the former army officer who ousted Morsi.
Sissi has counted on the support of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, two Gulf monarchies that have actively worked against Islamist political parties across the Arab world. In a column for The Post, Khashoggi rebuked the “intolerant hatred” shown by the Saudis and Emiratis “for any form of political Islam.” He argued “there can be no political reform and democracy in any Arab country without accepting that political Islam is a part of it.”
That’s a position welcomed by Erdogan, who once hoped his brand of religiously tinged democratic politics would be embraced by the Arab world. Instead, his rule has grown more autocratic, and the Middle East has been consumed by a series of wars and bitter geopolitical disputes. That includes the standoff between the Saudis, Emiratis and their allies on one side and Qatar on the other.
Turkey flew troops and food supplies into Qatar last year and still maintains a military base in Doha. Meanwhile, the Qataris pledged to inject some $15 billion worth of investment in Turkey’s flagging economy in August. Some analysts read Ankara’s moves — coupled with Erdogan’s overtures to Iran over the past year — as a riposte to the emergence of a U.S.-backed Middle East bloc including the Saudis, Emiratis and even Israel.
Amid the chaos of the region’s politics, Khashoggi urged the kingdom conduct itself with “ethics” and “dignity” — and therefore called on Saudi Arabia to draw down its war in Yemen.
Khashoggi also wrote about the pain of seeing friends arrested or otherwise forced into silence. “I have left my home, my family and my job, and I am raising my voice,” he wrote in his first column for The Post, where he openly worried about facing arrest if he returned. “To do otherwise would betray those who languish in prison. I can speak when so many cannot. I want you to know that Saudi Arabia has not always been as it is now. We Saudis deserve better.”
• The first round of Brazil’s presidential election takes place this Sunday. As we recently detailed, presidential frontrunner Jair Bolsonaro has come to the fore as a Trump-style right-wing populist. My colleagues report on the hard-liner’s political ascent:
“Like Trump, he embraces social media to reach legions of loyal followers. His rallies have become outlets for white men rattled by social and economic change. He has vowed to drain the swamp in the capital and make Brazil ‘great.’…
« Brazil, the mostly white upper-middle class has felt threatened by the rise of a largely black lower-middle class whose income shot up faster than that of the wealthiest segment of society during more than a decade of leftist Workers’ Party rule starting in 2003. During those years, affirmative-action-like programs sent many black Brazilians to college for the first time.
« With the economy languishing, however, all segments of society are hurting, and Bolsonaro’s impassioned speeches are touching a raw nerve. His rallies attract not only ultraconservatives in camouflage pants and T-shirts with skulls but also angry professionals who feel they have lost ground…
« The chances of a Bolsonaro victory, meanwhile, are stoking fears among liberals here and abroad, turning Brazil’s election into a globally watched race. Celebrities including Madonna, Cher and the British actor Stephen Fry have denounced Bolsonaro. In Brazil, social movements against him have sprung up — including one involving hundreds of thousands of tweets under the hashtag #elenao, or #NotHim. Last weekend, tens of thousands women, blacks, gay people and indigenous activists jointed in anti-Bolsonaro street protests.
« Many here argue that Bolsonaro’s incendiary rhetoric is emboldening others to use hate speech, bringing racism and homophobia into mainstream dialogue. On Saturday, Cesar Augusto da Silva, 28, a gay black illustrator in Sao Paulo, attended a rally with a sign around his neck that read: ‘Beware, Bolsonaro kills gays’ — a reference to a homophobic chant among Bolsonaro supporters at a soccer game that recently went viral on social media.
« ‘If we stay silent, it will make the discrimination worse,’ he said. ‘I’m here so that one day I can tell my children, I tried.’”
• The Post reports from Sulawesi, the Indonesian island that was rocked by an earthquake and tsunami last week:
“Across the heart of the Indonesia island chain — even as aid started to pick up nearly a week after the devastating quake and tsunami — the task of counting the bodies and seeking the missing is unfolding in scores of villages, neighborhoods and beachfronts.
« Jono Oge, about nine miles from the coast, is just one of them. The bodies of 34 people were found at the church earlier this week. Mika scanned the list of the dead. His daughter Windy was not among them.
« Now, Mika and others wake early each day. They carefully pick their way through twisted, crumbled concrete and splintered wood beams in what is left of the church. They watch heavy machinery scoop the thick mud, wondering whether this time another body will appear.
« Indonesia’s death toll reached at least 1,424 on Thursday and is expected to rise. One reason is because some victims were entombed in a slurry of soil, rocks and mud — a quake-triggered process known as liquefaction that weakens waterlogged soil. It can swallow and topple buildings or carry them away in ribbons of spongy earth.”
• The American envoy to the European Union has a not-so-modest proposal for his counterparts in Brussels. My colleague Adam Taylor explains:
« Gordon Sondland, who was sworn in as ambassador in late June, told a group of reporters in Brussels that once the United States had an appropriate trade deal with Europe, they could form a unified front to take on China.
« ‘The jackpot is having what is about $40 trillion combined GDP working as a bloc in terms of dealing with Chinese growth, Chinese theft of intellectual property, Chinese malign activity, Chinese militarization in South China Sea and all the other things we’ve been calling out to China to stop doing,’ Sondland said, according to Euractiv.
« ‘The sooner we conclude our business, the sooner we can both turn to the real opportunity, which is to deal with China and make China act like a good global citizen in the business world and otherwise,’ he said…
« The ambassador’s message came the same week that Vice President Pence accused Beijing of using trade policies to try to undermine U.S. leadership. ‘By one estimate, more than 80 percent of U.S. counties targeted by China voted for President Trump in 2016; now China wants to turn these voters against our administration,’ Pence said in a speech at the Hudson Institute on Thursday.”
Moving forward
Supreme Court Nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh moved closer to confirmation Thursday, as dozens of anti-Kavanaugh protesters descended on Capitol Hill. The Senate is preparing for a key vote Friday, with Republicans arguing that an FBI report on sexual misconduct allegations has exonerated the judge.
On Thursday, two Republicans with decisive votes, Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) and Jeff Flake (Ariz.) indicated that the FBI probe was adequate, though they said they’d continue to read it. Flake also said “we’ve seen no additional corroborating information” to bolster the allegation from Christine Blasey Ford, who emotionally testified last week that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were teenagers. Satisfying Flake and Collins, as well as a third Republican, Lisa Murkowski, would be enough to confirm Kavanaugh.
Democrats, meanwhile, were nearly unanimous in their opposition. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), a moderate facing a tough reelection in a Republican state, announced she will oppose Kavanaugh, leaving only one potential Democratic vote for the judge — Sen. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.) — who has yet to announce his position.
The latest FBI report only deepened the bitter, partisan rift over Kavanaugh’s nomination, in part because Democrats and Republicans offered sharply diverging assessments of the report. Republicans argue it clears Kavanaugh and Democrats say it is limited in scope and lacks interviews with key witnesses. Neither Ford nor Kavanaugh were interviewed by the FBI for the report, senators said. Lawyers for Ford and Deborah Ramirez — who accused Kavanaugh of exposing himself to her while they were students at Yale University— also criticized the probe, saying the FBI had declined to interview witnesses they suggested.
And while the majority of Republican senators support the judge, outside of Congress some conservatives and law professors are opposing his confirmation. In Boca Raton, Fla., retired Justice John Paul Stevens, a Republican, raised concerns about Kavanaugh’s temperament Thursday, and more than 2,400 law professors have signed a letter opposing his confirmation.
Kavanaugh, meanwhile, wrote an extraordinary op-ed published Thursday night, acknowledging that he was “very emotional” during his testimony and “I said a few things I should not have said.”
The confirmation battle has sowed divisions in the country over how sexual assault allegations should be handled. Earlier in the afternoon, protesters had gathered outside the Supreme Court and marched to the Senate to stage a sit-in. Some held a circular banner reading “We Believe All Survivors.” — Seung Min Kim and John Wagner
The big question
For all of the talk of Russia as a threat to the West, its economy remains tiny compared to that of the United States or the E.U. and its military lags far behind its American counterpart. But Moscow has become skilled at projecting its power and influence on the cheap, and it’s reaping the benefits of such tactics. So we asked Post Brussels bureau chief Michael Birnbaum: What does Moscow’s strategy look like in practice?
« I wanted to understand how Russia, an often-dysfunctional country that struggles to pay pensions, managed to transform itself into a comparative juggernaut on the world stage. So I spent weeks on the ground in Serbia, where Russia has managed to win over the public through a series of savvy PR moves.
« They’ve included a donation of ancient fighter jets, an infusion of conspiratorial anti-Western news injected into Serbian media and an emergency-response base that Western leaders worry is a spy hub. And those efforts have had an effect: Many Serbs think Russia is their most important global partner. In fact, Western investments and donations to Serbia are larger than Russian ones by a factor of 10.
« It’s true that Serbia is friendly territory for Russia — the two countries have shared Orthodox and Slavic heritage, and Russia opposed NATO’s bombing of Serbia in 1999 during the conflict in Kosovo.
« But the Russian playbook can often work in places where there aren’t as tight cultural ties. In France, Italy, Germany, and elsewhere in Europe, Russian President Vladimir Putin has become a hero of the far-right, as my colleague Anton Troianovski has written about, in part because he has been seen as a defender of conservative social values.
« But some countries do seem to be more resistant to Russia than others. Sweden, for example, was worried about Russian influence ahead of the elections they held last month. It didn’t turn out to be the case — in part, officials told me, because few foreigners speak Swedish well enough to be able to burrow their way into the local culture. Russia’s state-run Sputnik news agency has been highly successful at spreading Russian messages around the world, but its Swedish-language version sputtered and then shut down. Not enough Swedes were interested in its content. »
President Trump supported Brett M. Kavanaugh through sexual assault allegations and even mocked one of his accusers. In the Atlantic, Adam Serwer writes such cruelty is a form of camaraderie among Trump and his supporters. Meanwhile, a piece in the American Conservative argues the only way for Trump to achieve peace with North Korea is to visit Pyongyang, a historian draws parallels between the rise of Nazism and the present-day United States and Der Spiegel looks at German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s increasing political isolation.