Rana Sweis

Mideast Blog

Why do some Mukalla residents miss Al Qaeda?

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Fuel truck driver Ali Astal wouldn’t dare cross this country brimming with guns and militias without a Kalashnikov or two stashed under the dashboard.

But when he reaches the Mukalla city limits, he gamely surrenders his weapons at a checkpoint.

“This is for the city’s security,” he said as a soldier wrote out a receipt so he might collect the guns on his way out. Mukalla, former Al Qaeda bastion of about 500,000 people, is one of the safest cities in a nation torn apart by a brutal civil war that has claimed at least 10,000 lives, displaced 2 million and forced the internationally recognized government into exile. It may be the only place in Yemen that doesn’t allow civilians to carry firearms in public, a common sight elsewhere.

But two years after troops from the United Arab Emirates and their local allies reclaimed the city, a port on the Arabian Sea, residents are growing restless. Though the relative security is a welcome relief from bombings and shootings that were once commonplace, lasting stability will depend on reconstruction and economic development, and there has been little progress on those fronts.

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Mideast Blog

Why Saudi Crown Prince Wanted Khashoggi

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The mind plays strange tricks sometimes, especially after a tragedy. When I sat down to write this story about the Saudi regime’s homicidal obsession with the Muslim Brotherhood, the first person I thought I’d call was Jamal Khashoggi. For more than 20 years I phoned him or met with him, even smoked the occasional water pipe with him, as I looked for a better understanding of his country, its people, its leaders, and the Middle East. We often disagreed, but he almost always gave me fresh insights into the major figures of the region, starting with Osama bin Laden in the 1990s, and the political trends, especially the explosion of hope that was called the Arab Spring in 2011. He would be just the man to talk to about the Saudis and the Muslim Brotherhood, because he knew both sides of that bitter relationship so well.

And then, of course, I realized that Jamal is dead, murdered precisely because he knew too much.

Although the stories keep changing, there is now no doubt that 33-year-old Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the power in front of his decrepit father’s throne, had put out word to his minions that he wanted Khashoggi silenced, and the hit-team allegedly understood that as “wanted dead or alive.” But the [petro]buck stops with MBS, as bin Salman’s called. He’s responsible for a gruesome murder just as Henry II was responsible for the murder of Thomas Becket when he said, “Who will rid me of that meddlesome priest?” In this case, a meddlesome journalist.

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