Failure is a common denominator in the attempts of the actual ruler of the Saudi Arabia to improve his image and revive the Kingdom’s economy. Since the announcement of the Neom City project, bin Salman has not stopped making promises that Neom will become a modern utopia with a better and more developed future, in an attempt to promote it and convince the world of its importance.
The city plan – which only exists in bin Salman’s mind – is an electronic city that relies on artificial intelligence to operate everything, even the means of transportation will be flying cars, with robots, and lighting sand beaches. Moreover, the people who will live in it are of a completely different class from the ordinary people of this era, as bin Salman claims that the health system in NEOM will be so developed that it will enable residents to live for hundreds of years.
Those promises of Neom put it in a state of great chaos, given the lack of resources, as none of those promises have been implemented. The city is still a desert, with a few palaces for the king and a number of princes, with a private airport where only planes carrying diplomatic delegations landed to hold political meetings on several topics, including the issue of Arab-Israeli normalization, where a secret meeting was held between Netanyahu and Bin Salman to discuss this matter.
The financing of the project was troubled, as foreign investors withdrew from the project due to the bad reputation of the Saui which was tainted by Mohamed bin Salman’s repressive practices against human rights, as well as the financial crisis in the wake of the Corona pandemic. Instead of postponing the project until there is solid economy to support it, the crown prince determined to complete the project by buying shares in foreign companies to force them to enter the project, and by draining the kingdom’s wealth and reserves despite the people’s need for all these billions flowing to the young prince’s projects.
Despite all these obstacles and problems, bin Salman decided to expand the construction of internal projects within the Neom Mother project, such as the “The Line” city project, which will cost the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia tens of billions of dollars in addition to the cost of NEOM of $ 500 billion.
Instead of solving Al-Huwaitat Tribe’s crisis through discussion, dialogue, and appropriate compensation for the members of the tribe, who are required to evacuate their lands and the lands of their ancestors for the sake of the city, MBS used lethal force in return to force them to leave.
The announcement of the establishment of “The Line” was put on international headlines, but most of the commentators were not convinced of the logic of the idea, even the New York Times, which showed great excitement as MBS came to power, did not properly welcome his latest project, which he announced as if he was giving a speech on the “TED Talk” platform. The journalist Robert F. Worth wrote: “Bin Salman has said that The Line will be a civilizational revolution inhabited by a million people “from all over the world”… “Why would anyone want to move there, and why should the city be shaped like a capellini… It is difficult to find an answer to these questions ”.
“The Saudi scene is already full of mega-projects that have failed or been abandoned.”, he added.
“Some Saudis disapproved MBS’s presentation, as they spoke about the need to renew villages, small towns and neighborhoods in the country before throwing billions into such projects. Jamal Khashoggi suggested this is in a column he wrote with a co-author a few months before his murder.”
It is difficult to believe in the realism of “The Line”. A while ago, writer Aaron Gordon published a story in which he ridiculed the hypothesis of the existence of such a city, referring to a failed project from the 19th century for a “linear” city as well, where he wrote “The failure of the project La Ciudad Lineal In [making people’s lives easier] was because we are actually living in a three-dimensional place, and it is absurd to pretend otherwise, just as bin Salman wants The Line to become… I doubt there is anything that can be done in the first place. ”
Social media users have expressed their own opinions about NEOM – which recently poured money into the ads for it on CNN, during major sporting events, as well as on London billboards and Twitter ads.
Most people have been confused about this city. For example, Walton T Frost, commented, “Can anyone explain to me who the intended target group is for this ad campaign for NEOM? What are the Saudis trying to achieve with these ads? I am confused.” A number of other users also tweeted about their lack of knowledge of the city in the first place.
It would be unfair to display all these negative responses and nothing positive. Of course there were some positive comments, but they were few compared to the negative comments, as for most people in the world, Saudi Arabia is still linked to war crimes in Yemen, public executions and assassinations of journalists.
Therefore, spending millions on advertising for a random sample of Westerners appears to be an unlikely way to convince a global audience, which often takes stances based on human rights violations.
Read More: The Malicious Cooperation: “NEOM” to Embrace Saudi-Israeli Coordination
