Here’s why a representative of Saudi Arabia is talking to Wichita investors, business people

Matthew Kelly
Wed, September 27, 2023 

The Wichita Country Club has entertained no shortage of business-minded men with a background in oil over the years. On Wednesday, its guest list will include an official envoy from Saudi Arabia.

Fahad Nazer, a spokesperson for the kingdom’s embassy in Washington, D.C., will be in town to deliver a speech called “Business Opportunities In Saudi Arabia” at a networking dinner hosted by the World Trade Council of Wichita and promoted by Wichita State University.

“Saudi Arabia has embarked on some sweeping reforms, including on the role of women, and we hope to get some insights into these as they affect international business and commerce,” said Usha Hailey, World Trade Council chair and director of WSU’s Center for International Business Advancement.

WSU said in a statement that is committed to the free exchange of ideas and declined to weigh in on the country’s human rights record.

Saudi Arabia experts called to testify earlier this month before a bipartisan Senate investigations subcommittee said such events are part of a faux grassroots campaign to help restore Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s reputation, which remains damaged five years after government agents killed and dismembered Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in a consulate in Turkey.

“This is a tactic that we’ve seen the Saudi influence operation use post-Khashoggi,” Benjamin Freeman of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft told senators.

“They’ve hired a number of public relations firms in the heartland of this country, and what those organizations do is try to organize PR-type events for Saudi Arabia,” he said.

The kingdom’s de facto ruler, known internationally as MBS, has enacted meaningful reforms in recent years, but the country maintains a dismal human rights record and the crown prince’s rise to power has coincided with a crackdown on political opposition.

“Women being allowed to drive finally, trying to encourage more women to enter the workforce. At the same time, those social reforms — limited social reforms but still social reforms — have been accompanied by the worst period for human rights in the country’s history,” said Joey Shea, a Saudi Arabia researcher with Human Rights Watch, who also testified before Congress.

Big business

The Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, an approximately $800 billion sovereign wealth fund that represents the consolidation of Prince Mohammed’s economic power, tripled its holdings in U.S.-traded companies from 2020 to 2021. Its ambitious target is to attract $100 billion of foreign direct investment in Saudi Arabia by 2030.

Hailey, the WSU professor, dismissed the idea that the Wichita business group’s event could help rejuvenate the crown prince’s reputation by allowing him to promote his regime’s priorities and court local investors.

“The [World Trade Council] is not affiliated politically with any party and we do not allow political considerations to influence our decisions on who we may invite to speak,” Hailey wrote in an email response to Eagle questions.

“Why, you asked, are we hosting this event? We are honored to do so. Saudi Arabia is a big investor in our state and in the aerospace sector which is very important for Wichita.”

The kingdom inked a deal earlier this year for up to 121 Boeing 787 Dreamliners to anchor a new Saudi airline. Spirit AeroSystems, which manufactures 787 fuselages and engine pylons in Wichita, is on the World Trade Council’s board of directors along with other major employers and a representative from the Kansas Department of Commerce.

Records show the council is a nonprofit housed within Wichita State’s Barton School of Business.

“Wichita State University is committed to freedom of speech and expression and supports the exchange of ideas and perspectives by those among our campus community who may support or object to this event,” the university said in an official response by email earlier this month.

“It is inevitable that viewpoints will conflict, however Wichita State strives to maintain an environment that is a marketplace of ideas to the benefit of all individuals, where freely exchanging ideas is not compromised because the ideas or the entity presenting those ideas are considered offensive, unwise, disagreeable, too conservative, too liberal, too traditional or radical.”

Public image

Former Secretary of State and Wichita congressman Mike Pompeo, who toured WSU this spring to promote his memoir, did not respond to requests for comment through a spokesperson.

In “Never Give an Inch,” the precursor to a 2024 presidential bid that didn’t materialize, Pompeo recounts flying to the Saudi capital of Riyadh days after Khashoggi’s killing on a diplomatic mission.

“In some ways, I think the president was envious that I was the one who gave the middle finger to The Washington Post, The New York Times and other bed-wetters who didn’t have a grip on reality,” he wrote, mocking the media for portraying Khashoggi as a “Saudi Arabian Bob Woodward who was martyred for bravely criticizing the Saudi royal family.”

The former CIA director does not dispute the intelligence agency’s “medium to high confidence” determination that Prince Mohammed directly ordered the assassination, despite his repeated public denials.

President Joe Biden vowed while campaigning to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah” after the high-profile assassination. But since taking over as president, he has since eased into a tense working relationship with the crown prince, giving him an awkward fist bump in 2022 that he upgraded to a handshake when the two met earlier this month.

‘Sportswashing’

Shea, the Human Rights Watch researcher, said Prince Mohammed weathered the storm of global criticism and emerged with a strategy for deflecting from the country’s human rights record that centers on winning over U.S. consumers.

Its main avenues for doing that are through major investments in sports and entertainment, a practice that has been labeled “sportswashing” by critics.

“Many if not all of the investments coming from the [public investment fund] have the objective of burnishing their image in the United States,” Shea said, pointing to the recently announced plan to merge the PGA and the Saudi Arabia’s LIV Golf tour.

“If you’re a golf fan, the last thing you want is to be lectured by human rights people like me about the human rights implications of watching Saudi-backed golf.”

But conditions in the oil-rich kingdom are dire for anyone who speaks out against the regime’s leadership.

More people were executed in Saudi Arabia last year — 196 — than in any of the last 30 years since Amnesty International has been counting.

In an interview with Fox News last week, the crown prince confirmed that his government sentenced a retired teacher to death for posts he made on social media.

“Do we have bad laws? Yes. Are we are changing that? Yes,” he said.

He did not mention that the counterterrorism law used to sentence Muhammed al Ghamdi to death was reissued in 2017, the same year he became crown prince, Shea said.

State media in Saudi Arabia heralded the Fox appearance as a “comeback interview” for Prince Mohammed as he looks to win back public opinion in the west.