Since the announcement of the Neom City project, the spoiled Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman never stopped making promises about Neom becoming a modern city with a better future, in an attempt to promote his project and convince the local and international public of it, its importance and the need to establish it.
The city plan – which only exists in bin Salman’s mind – is about an electronic city that relies on artificial intelligence to operate everything in it, even transportation as there will be flying cars, the servants are robots, and beaches with Glow-in-the-Dark Sand.
The people who live there will be from a completely different category than ordinary people. 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 made about Neom were enough to turn it into a state of great chaos, due to the lack of resources, as none of these promises have been implemented.
The city is still a desert with some palaces for the king and princes, with a private airport for diplomatic delegations to hold political meetings on several issues, including the issue of Arab-Israeli normalization, where a secret meeting was held between Netanyahu and Bin Salman to discuss this matter.
The city that bin Salman hoped to build to be among developed countries and create a civilization of his own, is now in a chaotic state.
This chaos was due to the failure of planning, lack of prioritization, rush, and recklessness, as the city has faced many obstacles since the first day, but bin Salman only has a mentality that solves problems by creating other problems.
For example, Al-Huwaitat tribe crisis; Bin Salman used lethal force to force tribe members to evacuate the city, instead of solving the matter with discussion, dialogue, and appropriate compensation for the tribe members, who are required to vacate their homes and the lands of their ancestors for this city.
Financing this project had many problems, as foreign investors withdrew from the project due to the bad reputation of KSA tainted by Mohamed bin Salman with his repressive practices against human rights, and because of the financial crisis that KSA entered in the wake of the Corona pandemic.
Furthermore, instead of delaying the project until the economy of the country improves, the crown prince insisted to complete the project by buying shares in foreign companies to force them to participate in the project, and by using all wealth and reserves of the country despite the people’s need for all these billions flowing to the young prince’s projects.
Despite all these obstacles, bin Salman decided to expand the construction of internal projects within the Neom main project, such as the “The Line” city project, which will cost KSA tens of billions of dollars, in addition to the cost of NEOM which is worth 500 billion dollars.
Another planning error is that the announcement of the “Neom” itself was not properly reviewed with Egypt and Jordan that were supposed to be partners with Saudi Arabia in launching it, as the two governments expressed their discontent when bin Salman revealed the plan to world leaders; however, they decided not to release any statement at the time.
READ MORE: NEOM Exposes Tyrannical Face of Saudi under a Reckless Crown Prince
