In my opinion the editors of the New York Times were conned:
In just a few weeks, on June 24, Saudi Arabia is set to lift the longstanding ban on women drivers, putting into effect the most visible social reform that Prince Mohammed has championed.
All to the good, right? Not so fast. Over the past two weeks, the prince reversed course, unleashing and then expanding a crackdown on the very activists who had promoted the right of women to drive.
The government rounded up an initial group of activists and then after an international uproar, redoubled its efforts. At least 11 people, mostly women but also a few men, have now been arrested and interrogated without access to lawyers. One woman was said to have been held incommunicado.
Saudi prosecutors have not disclosed the names of those arrested or the charges filed against them. But news reports said the list includes one of Saudi Arabia’s most high-profile feminists, Loujain al-Hathloul, who was previously detained for more than 70 days in 2014 for trying to post an online video of herself driving into the kingdom from the United Arab Emirates. Others include a retired professor, an assistant professor of linguistics who is also a blogger in English, a psychotherapist in her mid-60s and a young nurse in Riyadh, the Saudi capital.
Saudi analysts say the reversal is a reflection of Saudi politics and the prince’s desire to portray the lifting of the driving ban as a gift of the monarchy to Saudi women rather than a concession to international or domestic pressure.
But the crackdown also raises doubts about the prince’s commitment to women’s equality and freedom of movement. Pro-government media outlets publicized photos of the detained activists and accused them of being traitors, a shocking attack on a group whose only apparent offense was peaceful protest. They should be released immediately.
The willingness to engage in wishful thinking about Saudi Arabia on the part of Westerners is genuinely astonishing to me. Mohammed bin Salman isn’t a liberalizing reformer. He’s just consolidating power.
The two main groups opposed to his assuming more power than any Saudi leader since his grandfather are the other members of the Saud family and the conservative Wahhabi clergy. He coralled the former in a hotel and extorted money from them and threw the latter a brushback pitch in the form of his announcement about women driving. It really isn’t that hard to understand.
Perhaps it’s a sham but on the surface KSA has reformed more in the last 2 years than in the previous 1,400.
Actually, it’s more conservative there now than it was in 1979.