To the rest of the world, Saudi Arabia may seem like a quasi-medieval kingdom where women are still struggling for basic rights, where bearded clerics are running the courts and where prisoners are regularly beheaded with the sword. But the Saudi monarchy – like its neighbors in Dubai and Abu Dhabi – has long cherished dreams of jumping to a high-tech future. The last Saudi king has created plans for six new cities in the desert, all of which are described as transforming steps into a world beyond oil.
Now the Saudis have announced a fantasy that makes all their previous efforts seem tame. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler, released a short film in January outlining his plans for the Line, a postmodern ecotopy to be built on the north coast of the kingdom. It will be a narrow urban strip of 106 kilometers long without roads, cars and pollution. MBS, as the Crown Prince is known, is planning to pour $ 500 billion into the Line and related projects, which is a lot of money even by Saudi standards. He calls the line a ‘civilization revolution’ to be inhabited by one million people ‘from around the world’. Why someone wants to move there, and why a city should be shaped like a string of capellini, is someone’s guess.
To watch the Crown Prince’s promotional video is to be immersed in a distinctive Saudi form of arrogance, mixing religious triumph and royal grandeur. The film begins with a fast-moving montage of the greatest scientific and technical breakthroughs of the 20th century, including an irregular image of Saudi Arabia’s founder – as if he were an innovator of Steve Jobs, rather than a camel riding desert. fighter. Dates flash with a vintage font on the screen while we see images of the first commercial radio broadcast (1920), the first color TVs (1953), the first successful kidney transplant (1954), the first man on the moon (1969 ), the birth of the internet. After the glory of YouTube and virtual reality has flown by, the screen goes blank and the words appear white on a black background: “What’s next?”
Cut to MBS on a stage in his white dress on the floor. He delivers a short talk in TED style, while behind him we see a topographical model of what looks like a black moon crust. A thin stream of glowing green fire cut through it, and for a moment I almost expected Godzilla to appear and fight with the prince. The Japanese film monster, born out of fear and excitement after World War II over the power of technology, would fit strangely here. But no: The green bar is meant to represent the line.
As MBS conjures up this brave new world – no journey takes longer than 20 minutes! no carbon emissions! – you have the feeling that his chutzpah is nothing but metaphysical. He seems to believe that nature itself is at his command. This should not be entirely surprising, as MBS has been promoting equally strange ideas since 2017, when it first introduced Neom, of which the Line is the broader futuristic development. (The name is a version of Greek and Arabic words for ‘new’ and ‘future’.) The Neom prospectus describes ‘a new way of life from birth to death that achieves genetic mutations to increase human power and IQ’, according to a 2019 article in The Wall Street Journal. Sowing clouds would bring rain into the desert. The project includes serious, realistic planning on desalination, alternative energy and desert agriculture, Ali Shihabi, a member of the Neom Advisory Council, told me. But these ideas are overshadowed by wild-eye conversations of super-fast trains, robot girls, and beaches with glowing sand.
The hubris underlying these proposals, fueled by generations of yes-men (including well-paid Western consultants), will be familiar to anyone who has spent time in Saudi Arabia. Still, you might have expected a little more caution from MBS. It is the man accused of ordering the gruesome murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist who was lured to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018, and then strangled and broken with a chainsaw by a team was sent from Riyadh. Khashoggi dared to write lightly critical columns in The Washington Post. The details of his brutal murder shocked the world and made MBS a pariah. He condemned the murder and denied any role in it. (The CIA begs to disagree.)
Humility is not in MBS ‘genes, for better or worse. He continues to harass and criticize his critics as if the Khashoggi assassination never came to light. But through his stupidity, he allowed himself to be locked up in Saudi Arabia’s religious institution, which put an end to the kingdom’s years-long promotion of toxic Islamic teachings. He relaxed the rigid restrictions on cultural life, and this made him hugely popular, especially among young people.
MBS’s bizarre promotional film not only reflects his royal ambitions. His technophilia resonates with many young Saudis, and you can not really blame them. Their own cities arose almost overnight from dark desert spots. Their grandparents watched in amazement as black goo shot up from the sand and instantly turned one of the poorest countries in the world into one of its richest. Why would they not believe in flying taxis and artificial moons?
The last part of the Line video falls on a surprising note: images of urban highways and airplanes reminiscent of the 1982 dystopian film “Koyaanisqatsi”, which portrayed modernity as a betrayal of the earth. According to the video, the line will save humanity from this nightmare, commute and eliminate pollution and preserve 95 percent of nature within its confines.
What the prince is not saying is that there are already thousands of people living in the same area in nature: a tribal community that has been there for centuries and is now being replaced by the project. One of these tribesmen made videos protesting the evictions – videos of a different kind, you might imagine, than what MBS produced. He was shot dead last year in a confrontation with Saudi security forces.
Anyone who has spent time in Saudi Arabia’s existing cities can sympathize with the desire to start anew. They are dusty and ugly. Narrow clergymen lead corrupt bureaucracies that are resistant to change. But the Saudi landscape is already littered with failed or abandoned mega-projects. Some Saudis are responding to MBS’s film with sour comments about the need to renovate the country’s existing towns and neighborhoods before throwing billions into another Xanadu. Jamal Khashoggi suggested so much in a column written with a co-author a few months before he was killed.
After MBS completes its presentation, a warm female voice describes life in the line. The urban dystopia deviates, and happier images parade before us: misty mountain peaks, waves hitting a pristine coast.
The final words of the film, spoken as a multicultural procession of faces flickering across the screen, are delightfully ridiculous: “A home for all of us – welcome to the line.” When I heard this, I could not help but wonder about the woman who spoke these words. Would she even consider going to a remote desert city, being subject to 24/7 surveillance and the whims of a murderous prince? My guess is that she did what so many other people who work for the Saudis did: spoke her lines, picked up the check and fled.