State-directed abducts, abductions and killings are on the rise having a quiet word with the perpetrators will not suffice, says foreign affairs commentator Simon Tisdall
The disappearance, and possible slaying, of Jamal Khashoggi, a high-profile critic of the Saudi regime, is the latest, disturbing addition to the rising toll of state-directed, extra-territorial kidnaps, abductions and killings around the world. So here's the question: why do more and more governments think they can get away with murder, figuratively if not literally?
Lack of respect for international law is one quick answer. Leaders who wax passionate about defending their national borders appear only too ready to violate those of others. Rarely have the basic rules governing relations between states been so wilfully, blatantly and often disregarded. It's a problem that should concern everybody- because everybody is at risk.
It's seducing to blamed the US, a country that once led by example but has come to epitomise the problem. In January 1986, worried about American captives in Lebanon, Ronald Reagan signed a top-secret covert action directive. The presidential “finding” authorised the CIA to kidnap suspected terrorists anywhere, any place. Reagan's” snatch and grab” operations inaugurated the modern-day practice of state abduction, resulting ineluctably to extraordinary rendition. They defined a fateful precedent.
George W Bush massively expanded rendition after the 2001 terror attacks, creating secret detention centres in third countries and pressurising allies( such as the UK) to help. Although the UN categorizes one country's abduction of another country's citizens as a crime against humanity- as in the case of North Korea and Japan- the US and its accomplice have in practice faced no substantive sanction or penalty to date. No legislator has gone to jail. No black site torturer has had to answer for his( or her) crimes.
This grim lesson in impunity has been absorbed and digested by governments everywhere, especially those whose legitimacy is in question or longevity in doubt. Saudi Arabia fits both categories. The Khashoggi disappearance, almost certainly ordered and planned in Riyadh, is the very kind of illegal action that has been normalised, though patently not justified or excused, by very recent American practise from Afghanistan and Iraq to Libya and Cuba.
It's not Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's first offence. Last December Saad Hariri, the elected the ministers of Lebanon, was effectively kidnapped and, after being roughed up a little, instructed to read out a pre-written abdication speech on Saudi television. Hariri was later to return to office. But the episode was a reminder of the authoritarian Saudi regime's long, dark history of abductions abroad.
One of the most notorious examples involved a dissenting royal family member, Prince Sultan bin Turki, who was seized in Geneva in 2003. It was claimed at the time that he was drugged and forcibly bundled on to an aircraft to Riyadh. Was this Khashoggi's fate? In 2016, Prince Sultan was reportedly kidnapped again, along with members of his entourage. The incident was described by analyst Hugh Miles as part of a” systematic state-run Saudi programme to kidnap defectors and protesters “.
When it comes to kidnaps and abductions, Saudi Arabia is minor-league compared to big players such as China and Russia. Xi Jinping's regime in Beijing stands accused of a” global kidnapping campaign”, targeting Chinese nationals living abroad whom it deems political protesters or security threats. Many such cases, such as the persecution of Taiwan citizens in mainland China, go largely unreported.
In contrast, the 2017 seizure in his Hong Kong hotel of Xiao Jianhua, a Chinese-Canadian billionaire, gained worldwide advertising. The victim was reportedly sedated, placed in a wheelchair with a blanket over his head, and rolled into captivity on the far side of Victoria Harbour. He subsequently resurfaced, denying he had been kidnapped, though it was assumed he spoke under duress. The parallel saga of five Hong Kong booksellers who were also snatched is still incomplete.
” Beijing's policy of forcibly repatriating people consideration be given to Chinese nationals- some of whom are in fact citizens of other countries- appears to be accelerating ,” wrote Carnegie fellow Zach Dorfman in Foreign Policy magazine.” Powerful businessmen, ex-Chinese Communist party officials, protesters, and activists have all been targeted as part of what western intelligence officials say appears to be a large-scale campaign .”
Russia's overseas conspiracies against exiled adversaries have a habit of turning lethal. The attempted poisoning in Salisbury of Sergei Skripal, the former Russian intelligence agent who Vladimir Putin last week denounced as a “scumbag” and “traitor”, recalled the assassination in London of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006. But these scandals are dwarfed, in scale, by Russian actions in occupied Crimea, where there have been dozens of unexplained, unnerving disappearances since 2014.
The growing willingness of states to launch extra-territorial operations is not simply a matter of unscrupulous leaders following the US's example. It reflects a more general loss of respect for international law and for the much-battered, much-lamented” global rules-based order “. It is one, dire show of the many negative consequences of the ongoing breakdown of the postwar, collective UN security system, to which irresponsible populist-nationalists such as Donald Trump are actively contributing.
Khashoggi's disappearance shows what can happen when the primacy of the law breaks down, and far from opposing to restore it, democratically elected leaders and governments connive in, or turn a blind eye to, the despots and tyrants who are responsible. Similarly blatant outrages are resulting every day, and every day go unpunished. Britain's foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, needs to wake up- and stand up. Amid the tormented holler of the disappeared, having a quiet term is not enough.
* Simon Tisdall is a foreign affairs commentator. He has been a foreign leader writer, foreign editor and US editor for the Guardian
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