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Princess and Ambassador Reema bint Bandar Al-Saud

Making The Bloody Saudi Monarchy Look Pretty

Reprinted with permission from TomDispatch

Princess Reema bint Bandar Al-Saud, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the U.S., was on the hot seat. In early March 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic swept the world, oil prices collapsed and a price war broke out between Saudi Arabia and Russia, leaving American oil and gas companies feeling the pain. As oil prices plummeted, Republican senators from oil-producing states turned their ire directly on Saudi Arabia. Forget that civil war in Yemen — what about fossil-fuel profits here at home?

To address their concerns, Ambassador Bandar Al-Saud agreed to speak with a group of them in a March 18th conference call — and found herself instantly in the firing line, as senator after senator berated her for the Kingdom's role in slashing global oil prices. "Texas is mad," Senator Ted Cruz bluntly stated. As the ambassador tried to respond, Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan retorted, "With all due respect, I don't want to hear any talking points from you until you hear from all [of us], I think there's 11 or 12 on the call."

The Saudi lobby in Washington was similarly flailing in its reaction to the anger on Capitol Hill. Hogan Lovells, one of the Kingdom's top lobbying firms in the nation's capital, was spearheading the response, emailing staffers in the offices of more than 30 members of Congress. Its message couldn't have been clearer: "Saudi Arabia has not, and will not, seek to intentionally damage U.S. shale oil producers."

However, its efforts were apparently falling on deaf ears, as some of Washington's most-lobbied policymakers remained furious at Riyadh for slashing oil prices. Even after being personally phoned four times by Hogan Lovells lobbyists between March and April, according to a Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) filing made by the firm, Senator Sullivan called for the Trump administration to place tariffs on Saudi oil imports. Other Republican senators, who had previously supported billions of dollars in arms sales to the Kingdom, now threatened to upend the entire American alliance with Saudi Arabia. North Dakota Senator Kevin Cramer, for instance, warned that the Kingdom's "next steps will determine whether our strategic partnership is salvageable."

That spring oil dispute was far from the first setback the Saudi lobby had faced in Washington in recent years. From the disastrous Saudi war in Yemen to the brutal murder and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, Congress had ample reason to turn its back on that country. Perhaps not so surprisingly, then, in a series of bipartisan bills that passed the House and the Senate, Congress sought to end America's military involvement in the Saudi-led coalition's brutal war in Yemen and halt arms sales to the Kingdom. Fortunately for the Saudi lobby, it had President Donald Trump, long wooed by the Kingdom's royals in the most personal of ways, as a safety net to veto those bills and protect them from punishment for their many misdeeds.

Yet, in 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic ravaged America, it became increasingly clear that Trump's reelection prospects were dimming and, with them, that guarantee of eternal protection.

And so, the question arose: What was an authoritarian government with oodles of lobbying money but dwindling influence in Washington to do as the prospect of a Joe Biden presidency and a Democratic Congress rose? The answer, it turned out, was to move its influence operation from the Beltway to the heartland.

The Saudis Shift To The States

Since becoming ambassador in February 2019, Princess Bandar Al-Saud found herself spending ever more time with people outside the Beltway, particularly in states that were reputed to have deep ties to Saudi Arabia. From Maine to Iowa to Alaska, the Saudi ambassador began a campaign of courting Main Street America.

In July 2020, she spoke at a virtual event hosted by the Greater Des Moines Partnership, the Des Moines International Trade Council, and the Iowa Economic Development Authority. In attendance were many prominent local business leaders like Craig Hill of the Iowa Farm Bureau and Jay Byers, CEO of the Greater Des Moines Partnership. The event also included some modest star-power, featuring a speech by Hall Delano Roosevelt, the grandson of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the CEO of the U.S.-Saudi Business Council. (He would soon after publish an op-ed in a Maine newspaper urging local lobstermen to build ties with the Kingdom.)

Not surprisingly, the main focus of Ambassador Bandar Al-Saud's speech was "the importance of the 75-year relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States." She also highlighted major changes she claimed were underway in Saudi Arabia, thanks to that country's "Vision 2030," a plan sponsored by Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, also known as MBS, the son of King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and the power behind the throne there. At least in theory, Vision 2030 was aimed at modernizing and diversifying Saudi Arabia's oil-based economy.

Such presentations by the ambassador would soon become a pattern. She would, for instance, make a similar argument later in 2020 to Iowa's Siouxland Chamber of Commerce's Women Mentoring and Networking Committee.

And it wasn't just Iowa. She began giving similar speeches across the country. In July, she spoke at a virtual event hosted by the Maine World Affairs Council. It would be attended by more than 70 members of the Maine business community and former Democratic Congressman Mike Michaud. In early October, again virtually, she addressed the Wyoming Global Technology Summit and more than 80 business and political leaders. They included Governor Mark Gordon (whom she even gifted with two pieces of art) and Cynthia Lummis, who, the next month, would be elected to the Senate. Later in October, the princess would speak to more than 50 local business leaders at the Alaska World Affairs Council.

Ambassador Bandar Al-Saud's road show would only sweep on, right past the election and inauguration of President Joe Biden. In late January, she would be at the World Affairs Council in Dallas/Fort Worth and, in March, the Houston World Affairs Council. As always, attending would be business leaders from the area, including (you won't be surprised to learn) prominent oil executives. Whatever local issues she might focus on in such talks, the ambassador always kept the main focus on the splendors of MBS's Vision 2030 plan and just how important it was to strengthen the decades-long relationship between the two countries.

Oh yes, and each of these events had one other thing in common: They were all organized and promoted by Saudi Arabia's registered foreign agents.

Despite appearances, such events weren't the product of meticulous planning by Saudi diplomats or Ambassador Bandar Al-Saud herself. Instead, the Saudis have done what many foreign governments do here to make their message heard. They hired lobbyists and public relations firms. In this case, one firm has largely been responsible for the way the Saudis have gotten the word out so far beyond the Beltway: the Larson Shannahan Slifka Group.

Also known as LS2, Larson Shannahan Slifka describes itself as a "bipartisan public relations, government affairs, public affairs, and marketing firm headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa." It boasts an impressive collection of clients, including Walmart and the Ford Motor Company. Absent from its website, however, is any hint of the extraordinary amount of work it's done to boost the Saudis nationally since signing a contract with the Kingdom in November 2019 worth $126,500 a month. In its FARA filings, that firm has reported conducting more than 1,600 political activities on behalf of the Saudis — more, that is, than all the other firms working for the Saudis combined in 2020, according to a soon-to-be-released report on the Saudi lobby from the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy, where we work.

Add in one more factor: unlike other firms that lobby for Saudi Arabia, LS2's work has taken place almost exclusively outside of Washington, D.C. They've reached a remarkably sweeping set of state and local influencers on behalf of the Saudi royals, including small businesses, local politicians, nonprofit companies, small-town media outlets, synagogues, and even high-school students.

And whether any of those Americans realized it or not, they were being swept up in a campaign to give the Saudis local clout nationally and so pave the way for a Saudi public relations rehabilitation campaign in Washington, D.C., itself.

Creating American Grassroots For A Gulf Monarchy

There's a fairly simple pattern to the way the Saudi lobby has been wooing the states to woo Washington. First, Larson Shannahan Slifka launches a local campaign, including hundreds of calls and emails to state legislators, chambers of commerce, university professors, small businesses, and just about anything or anyone you can imagine in between. Some of those ties, in turn, create opportunities for influential media moments such as, for example, when Saudi embassy spokesman Fahad Nazer — a former FARA-registered Saudi agent — conducted interviews with South Dakota Public Radio last October and Michigan's Big Show this February.

Other lobbying activities have led to crucial Saudi outreach events, filling the seats (or Zoom invites) at think-tank discussions, business forums, or even interfaith dialogues. For example, when Ambassador Bandar Al-Saud delivered a keynote "fireside chat" at the annual Wyoming Global Technology Summit, John Temte, who leads the business network that hosts the forum, introduced the princess and moderated the question-and-answer discussion, a role likely arranged in the course of LS2's six calls and emails to him over the preceding two weeks. Five days later, addressing the Siouxland Chamber of Commerce's Women Mentoring and Networking Committee, the ambassador was introduced by Linda Kalin, the director of the Iowa Poison Control center, and another frequent LS2 contact. In this way, the firm effectively continues to turn local entrepreneurs and public-health officials into community ambassadors for the Kingdom.

And understand this as well: Such events aren't just a way for Saudi bureaucrats to meet local business leaders. They also provide the perfect opportunity for Saudi-backed lobbyists to begin rebuilding ties in Washington hurt by those falling oil prices, the devastating civil war in Yemen, and the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. Consider this the second part of the Kingdom's faux-grassroots campaign and, for this, one of the Saudis' key lobbying groups in Washington, Hogan Lovells, took over.

Its relationship with Saudi Arabia can be traced back at least to 1976 when the firm's predecessor, Hogan and Hartson, first signed a contract with the Kingdom. Now, in addition to spinning a Saudi narrative about the disastrous war in Yemen, that firm has been working to convert LS2's state and local efforts into political capital in Congress. Armed with glowing one-page summaries of such dialogues from Maine to Alaska, the firm has been promoting a vision of grassroots American support for the U.S.-Saudi relationship inside the Beltway. The event descriptions it sends around highlight many of the same people that Larson Shannahan Slifka had first contacted.

Its emails are tailored to each Congressional office it contacts, mentioning issues and local stakeholders relevant to the intended senators and House members. For example, an email to the staff of Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine touted Bandar Al-Saud's July forum at that state's World Affairs Council, described the ambassador's interest in a Saudi contemporary art exhibit displayed by local Bates College, and noted that former Democratic Congressman Mike Michaud attended the event. This February, after Bandar Al-Saud addressed the World Affairs Council of Greater Houston, Hogan Lovells emailed Republican Senator John Cornyn's office to underscore her remarks on U.S.-Saudi cooperation on energy, technology, and space exploration in his home state.

While describing audiences in such local forums as responding with "overwhelmingly positive feedback" to the Kingdom's messaging, one key fact is always omitted: that the events themselves were orchestrated by the Saudi lobby. Reading the glossy accounts of them, members of Congress and their staff normally have no idea that the meetings — and not just the press releases they're receiving — were products of that very lobby. In other words, by omitting such details, the Saudi lobby has effectively launched an astroturfing campaign to influence Congress when it comes to future relations with the Kingdom.

The Consequences

Of course, there's nothing new about such lobbyists hired by foreign countries touting trade with the U.S. or anything necessarily unethical about promoting such ties. However, even as the Saudi lobby has eagerly peddled a rose-tinted story of the Kingdom's increasingly diversified economy, expanding women's rights, and exciting tourism opportunities (despite the pandemic moment), policymakers and the media that cover them should remember that such a narrative is, at the very least (and to put the matter as politely as possible), incomplete.

While, in the context of Prince Salman's Vision 2030 plan, selling future economic opportunities to Iowa farmers, South Dakota manufacturers, and Maine lobstermen, LS2, Hogan Lovells, and other such firms ignore the most crucial aspects of the U.S-Saudi relationship in the present moment: the staggering levels of U.S. arms sales to the Kingdom, the devastating war in Yemen that Prince Salman and crew continue to fight, the targeting of Saudi dissidents and women's rights groups, and MBS's complicity in the brutal murder of Khashoggi (as laid out recently in an intelligence report released by the Biden administration). These are real-world consequences of a partnership that has often escaped serious scrutiny, shielded by past presidents of both parties more concerned with protecting access to cheap oil and combating their definition of terrorism.

By enlisting trusted community members across the U.S. to help peddle the best possible version of the Kingdom, the Saudi lobby has given its brand a homegrown, American-as-apple-pie shine. At a moment when the Biden administration and Congress are weighing the future of the U.S.-Saudi partnership, the value of such an image shouldn't be underestimated. As lawmakers look more skeptically at claims that American and Saudi security interests are still aligned, the Saudi lobby promises shared future profits in factsheets and emails that hail the historic trade ties between Michigan and Saudi Arabia or characterize the Kingdom as "South Dakota's fastest growing export partner."

In reality, however, even if a promised future economic boom between the two countries were to materialize, it would hardly ameliorate the Kingdom's many negatives, from the catastrophic famine it continues to stoke in Yemen to its blatant human rights violations. Members of Congress and local public servants alike should beware. What may seem like a spreading grassroots show of support for the Kingdom could, in fact, be just another mirage in the desert.

Ben Freeman is the director of the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy (CIP) and author of a report on the Saudi lobby that will be released in early May 2021.Brian Steiner and.Leila Riazi are researchers with the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative (FITI) at the Center for International Policy.

Danziger: Indelible Stains

Danziger: Indelible Stains

Jeff Danziger lives in New York City. He is represented by CWS Syndicate and the Washington Post Writers Group. He is the recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. He has published eleven books of cartoons and one novel. Visit him at DanzigerCartoons.com.

World’s Largest Humanitarian Crisis Largely Ignored By Western Media

World’s Largest Humanitarian Crisis Largely Ignored By Western Media

Reprinted with permission fromAlterNet.

A day ago, a Saudi jet fired on a convoy of cars in Mawzaa district, Yemen. The strike is reported to have killed at least twenty civilians, many from the same family. These cars carried families who were fleeing renewed fighting near the city of Taiz in southwest Yemen. “Nowhere in Yemen is safe for civilians,” said Shabia Mantoo of the UN’s Refugee Agency (UNHCR). This incident, like others before it, says the UNHCR, “demonstrates the extreme dangers facing civilians in Yemen, particularly those attempting to flee violence, as they disproportionately bear the brunt of conflict.”

Saudi Arabia has made no official statement about the incident. It is likely that the Kingdom’s Joint Incidents Assessment Team (JIAT) will study the evidence available. Earlier atrocities have been looked at by JIAT, and – in an April 2017 report – they have admitted culpabilty for many of them. But in each case, the Saudi government says that it was either ‘unaware of the presence of the hospital’ that it struck or that civilian areas were being used by the anti-Saudi Yemeni coalition as military bases. It is impossible to deny the weight of evidence that shows Saudi bombardment of civilian areas – schools, hospitals, markets and residential areas. But they hesitate to take full responsibility.

The Arab world’s richest country, Saudi Arabia, went to war against the Arab world’s poorest country in 2015. In this period, Yemen – with a population of 25 million – has been substantially destroyed. The United Nations has been tracking the scale of the atrocity. The numbers are bewildering. Close to 20,000 people have died in this war, at least half of them civilians. The numbers of those injured could not be tabulated as half of Yemen’s hospitals and medical centers do not work. This means there is no accurate measure of those who come in to be treated.

Life for the survivors, thus far, has been perilous.  For them, time drags on. The war continues endlessly. Suffering intensifies. Ancient maladies reappear. Amongst them is famine. Last week, the UN’s Special Envoy for the Secretary General for Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh was in New York. He addressed the Security Council about the situation in Yemen. Mr. Cheikh said that 20 million of Yemen’s 25 million people are affected by the war. Most of them have little access to water, sanitation, hygiene and food. Seven million of them – including 2.3 million children under the age of five – are on the ‘cusp of famine.’ There are now 320,000 suspected cases of cholera in the country, with 1,700 confirmed deaths because of that disease.

Reports have come out of Yemen thanks to a combination of UN personnel, a few intrepid journalists, and Yemenis who have been trying to make their case – unsuccessfully – to the international community. When the UN tried to take three BBC journalists on an aid flight from Djibouti to Sana’a, the Saudi-backed forces prevented its arrival. Ben Lassoued, who works at the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Yemen, said, ‘It’s unfortunate and partially explains why Yemen, which is one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, is not getting much attention in international media.’

Yemen, Somalia, South Sudan and Nigeria are each in the throes of a man-made famine, with twenty million people starving to death. No humanitarian intervention has been possible. There has been little concern from the powers that be. Pictures on social media of rail-thin children evoke pity, but no action. The UN has only been able to raise 43 per cent of the $6.27 billion it urgently needs to prevent the famine in these four countries. The United States has contributed $1.9 billion to this effort. But this is a fraction of what the US arms industry has been making by selling arms to Saudi Arabia, resupplying it as it bombs Yemen into famine. Most recently, when US President Trump visited Saudi Arabia, the US sealed a $110 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia. This deal is in addition to a $350 billion arms sales agreement over ten years.

In other words, the United States is fueling a conflict that has resulted in war crimes and famine. It is responsible – by proxy – for this devastation.

In 2016, a UN panel of experts concluded that the Saudi war on Yemen documented grave violations of human rights that were “widespread and systematic.” What is most chilling in that report is the documentation of Saudi strikes on transportation routes (both sea and air), storage facilities for holding food (including an Oxfam warehouse for food aid) and a water project funded by the European Union. The panel noted that it “documented three coalition attacks on local food and agricultural production sites.” In 2015, Saudi aircraft destroyed the cranes and warehouses in the Yemeni port city of Hudaydah. With 90 per cent of Yemen’s food imported, the destruction of this infrastructure has been catastrophic. These strikes by the Saudis on food transportation and storage as well as on water purification plants have produced famine conditions in Yemen.

Mr. Cheikh’s report to the UN Security Council did not lift the rhetoric of its members. They sat silently. China’s ambassador – Liu Jieyi – is the President of the Security Council for July. He said that the mute members “do see eye to eye with each other on the gravity of the situation” and that they support a “political solution as the only way to end the conflict in Yemen.” Three UN-brokered peace talks have failed, with both sides rejecting the latest round in August of last year. Talks set to start in May of this year faltered. Discussions began in Oman, with confidence building measures on the table. The UN offered to give the port city of Hudaydah to a neutral country for oversight. Neither side could agree on who should take charge of this crucial city.

UNICEF’s Justin Forsyth went before a subcommittee of the US Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee yesterday. He noted that the crises in places such as Yemen deserve immediate attention. Funds for relief must be provided and a political solution to the crisis must be found. Neither the funds nor the political solution seems possible in these times. These wars seem endless. Their tragedies increase geometrically. But nonetheless Mr. Forsyth suggested that more is needed. “Conflict, extreme climate events like drought, environmental degradation, climate change, loss of livelihoods and poverty,” Mr. Forsyth said, “all underpin these looming famines and crises. Unless we address these causes we will continue to get recurrent crises.”

Mr. Forsyth was bold to raise these deeper challenges. He left out some: an economic model that favors income inequality and that displaces human labor for machines and a callous disregard for the suffering of vast areas of the world that have not been able to move out of the shackles of colonial-era poverty. Still, the Senators nodded their heads. They are sagacious.

But then they move along. There are arms deals to cut. There are donors to talk to. So much to do in a day. So difficult to concentrate on every problem in the world. So hard to digest these stories of suffering. Perhaps an extra oxycodone with the next cup of coffee?

Vijay Prashad is professor of international studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. He is the author of 18 books, including Arab Spring, Libyan Winter (AK Press, 2012), The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South (Verso, 2013) and The Death of a Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution (University of California Press, 2016). His columns appear at AlterNet every Wednesday.

Millions Are Facing Death By Famine In Yemen

Millions Are Facing Death By Famine In Yemen

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

The ruins carpeted the city market, rippling outwards in waves of destruction. Broken beams, collapsed roofs, exploded metal shutters and fossilized merchandise crumbled underfoot.

In one of the burnt-out shells of the shops where raisins, nuts, fabrics, incense and stone pots were traded for hundreds of years, all that was to be found was a box of coke bottles, a sofa and a child nailing wooden sticks together.

This is Sa’ada, ground zero of the 20-month Saudi campaign in Yemen, a largely forgotten conflict that has killed more than 10,000, uprooted 3 million and left more than half the country short of food, many on the brink of starvation.

Gaith Abdul-Ahad in The Guardian, 12/9/16

Yemen stands as the worst-threatened of four countries where impending famine conditions have been said to comprise the single-worst humanitarian crisis since the founding of the U.N.  On May 2nd, 2017, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs published a grim infographic detailing conditions in Yemen where 17 million Yemenis — or around 60 percent of the population — are unable to access food.  The U.S. and its allies continue to bomb Yemen.

Jan Egeland, who heads the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), says that seven million Yemeni people are on the brink of famine. “I am shocked to my bones,” said Egeland, following a five day visit to Yemen. “The world is letting some 7 million men, women and children slowly but surely be engulfed…” Egeland blames this catastrophe on “men with guns and power in regional and international capitals who undermine every effort to avert an entirely preventable famine, as well as the collapse of health and educational services for millions of children.” Egeland and the NRC call on all parties to the conflict, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, the U.S. and the U.K. to negotiate a cease fire.This weekend, the situation stands poised to become dramatically worse with the apparently imminent bombing, by Saudi Arabia, one of the U.S.’ closest allies, of the aid lifeline which is the port of Hodeida.

 

Hodeidah (YAmen) (AFP) -

Egeland stresses the vital importance of keeping humanitarian aid flowing through Hodeida, a port which stands mere days or hours from destruction. “The Saudi-led, Western-backed military coalition has threatened to attack the port,” said Egeland, “which would likely destroy it and cut supplies to millions of hungry civilians.”  U.S. congress people demanding a stay on destruction of the port have as yet won no concessions from the Saudi or U.S governments.

The U.S. Government has as yet sounded no note of particular urgency about ending or suspending the conflict, nor has its close ally in the Saudi dictatorship.  Saudi Arabia’s Defense Minister, Prince Mohammed bin Salman recently gave “a positive view of the war in Yemen.” (New York Times, May 2, 2017). He believes that Saudi forces could quickly uproot the Houthi rebels, but rather than endanger Saudi troops he says “the coalition is waiting for the rebels to tire out.”

“Time is in our favor,” he added.

Even if Hodeida is spared, reduced import levels of food and fuel from the Saudi-imposed naval blockade puts the price of desperately needed essentials beyond the reach of the poorest. Meanwhile prolonged conflict, dragged out by a regime that feels “time is on its side” and punctuated by deadly airstrikes, has displaced the needy to those areas where food insecurity is the highest.

Refugees from three North African countries where conflict is also threatening to impose terrible famine have Yemen on their route to escaping the continent, so they have fled conflict and famine only to be trapped in the worst of this dreadful year’s arriving tragedies.

The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, describes the present situation, two years since Saudi airstrikes escalated the conflict:

“The violent deaths of refugees fleeing yet another war, of fishermen, of families in marketplaces – this is what the conflict in Yemen looks like two years after it began…utterly terrible, with little apparent regard for civilian lives and infrastructure.

“The fighting in Hodeida has left thousands of civilians trapped – as was the case in Al Mokha in February – and has already compromised badly-needed deliveries of humanitarian assistance. Two years of wanton violence and bloodshed, thousands of deaths and millions of people desperate for their basic rights to food, water, health and security – enough is enough. I urge all parties to the conflict, and those with influence, to work urgently towards a full ceasefire to bring this disastrous conflict to an end, and to facilitate rather than block the delivery of humanitarian assistance.”

Time is on no-one’s side as regards the crisis in Yemen. As nightmare visions of living skeletons with bloated bellies and pleading eyes once more appear on the planet’s TV screens, we in the U.S. will have missed a vital chance to avert a world in which untold millions are to be shocked to their bones.

 

Kathy Kelly (Kathy@vcnv.org) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org) 

This article was made possible by the readers and supporters of AlterNet.