Implications of Qatar crisis - FINANCIAL-24
Muhammad Arif
Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates broke off relations with Qatar in the worst diplomatic crisis to hit Gulf Arab states in decades.
The three Gulf countries and Egypt accused Qatar of supporting terrorism and destabilizing the region. Qatar - which shares its only land border with Saudi Arabia - has rejected the accusations, calling them "unjustified" and "baseless." Yemen and the Maldives have also cut ties with Qatar.
Qatari citizens have been told they have 14 days to leave Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE, and those countries also banned their own citizens from entering Qatar.
For this:
- Qatar has been ejected from the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen over alleged support of ISIS and al-Qaeda, according to Saudi state media
- Emirates airline says it's suspending all flights to and from Doha
- Kuwait, Oman only Gulf Cooperation Council members are still maintaining ties with Qatar.
- Iran blames tensions on Donald Trump's recent visit to Saudi Arabia
- Saudi Arabia said it has closed Al-Jazeera office in kingdom
- Turkey calls for dialogue to resolve the rift
Saudi Arabia's state news agency announced the cutting of ties, saying it was seeking to "protect national security from the dangers of terrorism and extremism."
All ports of entry between the two countries will be closed, according to the statement.
Gulf allies have repeatedly criticized Qatar for alleged support of the Muslim Brotherhood, a nearly 100-year-old Islamist group considered a terrorist organization by Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
The UAE accused Qatar of "funding and hosting" the group in its statement announcing the severance of ties.
It also cited Qatar's "ongoing policies that rattle the security and sovereignty of the region as well as its manipulation and evasion of its commitments and treaties" as the reason for its actions.
Qatar denies that it funds or supports extremist groups.
Moreover, the Saudi-led Arab coalition fighting Yemen's Houthi rebels also expelled Qatar from its alliance, alleging support of "al Qaeda and Daesh [also known as ISIS], as well as dealing with the rebel militias," according to Saudi's state media agency.
In the opaque world of Arab diplomacy, things are never quite as they seem. On the surface, the reason Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt cut air, land and sea travel to the small peninsula state of Qatar last week is straightforward enough:
President Donald Trump of USA has since endorsed this view via Twitter, adding that he discussed the "funding of radical ideology" during his recent visit to the Middle East. The gulf leaders he met with were all "pointing to Qatar," he said when attributing blame.
This is how Trump who was the most critical of Muslims has now entered in Gulf with nefarious design to further divide the prosperous part of Muslim world.
Despite the convenience of this narrative, there are other forces at play. In reality, Qatar has been ostracized by its "brotherly" neighbors, as the language of regional diplomacy has it, for not kowtowing to the collective vision for the Middle East now largely shared by the United States, Saudi Arabia and Israel.
There is no doubt that the al-Thani clan, which rules the emirate from its capital, Doha, has funded militants fighting the regime of president Bashar al-Assad in Syria and meddled in the internal affairs of other Arab nations through its support of the Muslim Brotherhood, notably in Egypt. But these are relative sideshows in a broader regional game. Even allowing for the seeming hypocrisy of Saudi Arabia's making such accusations, given its history of backing Sunni militant groups in Syria and its military intervention in Yemen, the allegations are so well known as to be tired at this point.
With the Arabs lashing out at each other - a family feud on steroids - Pakistan is trying to back away from the coming fight with Iran and play any role in this conflict.
It all appeared so simple when viewed from the glittering palaces of Trump's Riyadh summit. The U.S, Saudi Arabia and dozens of other Muslims nations versus Iran in a "battle between good and evil" that will "destroy the terror that threatens the world."
Now this thin unity has been torn with the announcement that Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies are cutting diplomatic relations with neighbor Qatar, a card-carrying member of the putative anti-terror coalition, and cutting off all land, air and sea ties.
"This decisive decision" was being taken because of "grave violations" including "adopting various terrorist and sectarian groups" including "the Muslim Brotherhood Group, Daesh (ISIS) and al Qaeda," the Saudis said in their declaration, without betraying a hint of irony.
Thus politics in the Greater Middle East is going to be more complicated.
The Riyadh summit "has widened the sectarian divide in the Muslim world," "The Saudi-led Islamic Military Alliance against terrorism may have some counter-militancy aims, but it is also increasingly clear that it has been conceived by the kingdom as an anti-Iran alliance In a blur of glittering chandeliers, glowing orbs, and billions of dollars in trade deals (along with a tidy gift to Ivanka Trump's favorite charity), Saudi Arabia had deftly transformed itself into America's soul-mate and Iran secured its place as Public Enemy.
All that complex stuff about the so-called Islamic State being a Sunni terror group that gains its inspiration - and financing - from elements in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, while Iran is Shiite and at war with ISIS, was left at the palace door.
Ditto the fact that America's bare-chested, muscle-flexing entry into the Middle East's seminal religious and geographic divide left Pakistan - a Sunni-majority country with a sizable Shiite population - in a no-win situation. After all, while Saudi Arabia provides billions in aid to Muslim Pakistan, Iran is right next door.
The optics and timing of the Saudi summit were particularly challenging for Pakistan. Less than two weeks earlier the head of Iran's armed forces had threatened military strikes on Pakistan after ten Iranian soldiers were killed by Pakistan-based Sunni militants.
Making matters worse, Pakistan recently agreed to allow its former top general to command the military wing of the new Saudi-led alliance. The fact that it's now an overtly anti-Iranian military force is a real problem for Islamabad policymakers.
"We have to walk a very fine line between Saudi Arabia and Iran," a senior government official of Pakistan says. "It can be quite dangerous."
It's dangerous for everyone else, as well, since Pakistan happens to have nuclear weapons.
Iran may not be willing to strike at Saudi Arabia, but Pakistan would be a tempting place to send a message if Islamabad doesn't play its cards right. After all, Iran and Saudi Arabia are already fighting proxy wars in Syria and Yemen. What's one more?
Even if Iran's military keeps its weapons sheathed, there are plenty of other ways. Tehran could cause headaches for Pakistan by cutting trade; killing plans to supply electricity, desperately needed in a country suffering 12-to-14-hour-a-day power cuts; and, most crucially, stirring up trouble in the restive province of Baluchistan, on the shared border, as well as via Pakistani Shiite militant groups that can be found in every corner of the country.
Adding humiliation to diplomatic discomfort, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif -who reportedly practiced his speech while flying to Riyadh - was not allowed addressing the Saudi-American summit, presumably because the Saudis knew he would make a case for his country's difficult geo-political position. The snub has angered many in Pakistan.
"Trump's speech itself further added salt to the wounds," wrote columnist Kunwar Khuldune Shahid in The Diplomat. "Not only did the U.S. president identify India as a victim of terror, he failed to acknowledge Pakistan as one." Trump also refused a private meeting with Sharif, rubbing in the salt. That's probably because the Americans want Pakistan, widely accused of cynically supporting militants, to do more to crack down on terrorist groups operating inside the country.
Ironically, the militant organizations Washington is most concerned about are Sunni groups often spawned in the extremist Saudi-funded Madrassas that litter Pakistan. But let's not let complicated facts get in the way of Good vs. Evil policy.
The long-simmering Saudi-Qatar enmity broke into the open not long after Air Force One lifted off from Riyadh.
It began with a Qatar News Agency story quoting the Emir as dissing the Saudis and Emiratis and seemingly praising Iran.
Qatar was being unfairly criticized by "some governments which promote terrorism by adopting a radical version of Islam which doesn't represent its tolerant reality," Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al Thani, was quoted by the Qatar News Agency as saying.
The story went on: "There is no wisdom in harboring hostility toward Iran," which he allegedly called "an Islamic power" - blasphemy to the Saudis - adding that Trump's Saudi visit was an attempt to distract from the Russia investigation.
Doha quickly claimed the news agency's website had been hacked and the comments were "fake news." If it was the work of agent's provocateurs, they succeeded in igniting simmering tensions that had been papered over since the last time they came to blows over divergent policies toward the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt.
The media war of words had been building to recent dramatic break.
"Since its inception, Qatar has been an emirate of coups, treachery and playing with fire," declared Saudi Arabia's Al Eqtisadiya, in one typical broadside. "Bark as you wish, Qatar won't change its principles," Qatar's Al Raya newspaper responded.
The diplomatic blood-letting among erstwhile Gulf brethren is giving hope to some observers here that the so-called Muslim NATO, haughtily announced by the Saudis without much consultation with its presumptive allies, might amount to little more than a Trump photo op.
Pakistan is forced to sit back and watch. There are no plans to follow in the footsteps of Saudi vassals like Yemen and the Maldives and cut ties with Qatar, according to the Foreign Ministry.
"The overriding imperative is that Islamabad keeps a healthy distance between itself and the conflicts raging across the Arab world," The Express Tribune said in an editorial the morning after the break. "This is not our fight."
That unnamed government official mentioned earlier said much the same in more diplomatic language.
The more heinous sin for which Doha is being punished is its willingness to acknowledge that Iran occupies a position as an important regional power and that political Islamists like Hamas and Hezbollah have a role to play in determining the future of the Middle East. To put it bluntly, Qatar is being penalized for refusing to accept the status quo of the past 40 years, and for daring to challenge the conventional wisdom in the Gulf that bashing Tehran, buttressing military strongmen and suppressing political Islamism are the right path for the region.
For the governments in Saudi Arabia, United States and Israel, such divergent thinking is not merely undesirable but heretical. While these three powers pay lip service to the idea of peace in the Middle East, narrow self-interest increasingly drives their thinking. And this shortsighted calculation underpins their unlikely-seeming alliance.
This is not to paint Qatar as an innocent party that deserves no criticism. Doha's posture since the Arab Spring as a champion of political reform stands in marked contrast to the near-feudal nature of its own system of governance, whereby the ruling al-Thani family and some 200,000 Qataris hold sway over a population of about two million foreign residents.
The grim plight of the migrants working on construction projects for the 2022 World Cup has received wide coverage, but there is a history of other abuses that have received less publicity. In one case, more than 5,000 members of one clan have since 2004 had their citizenship revoked by the government amid allegations that some family members had been involved in a Saudi-based plot to overthrow the current emir's father in 1996.
To justify this latest severing of diplomatic ties with Doha, Saudi Arabia cited recent comments praising Iran that were attributed to the Qatari emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani. Qatar has dismissed these allegations as "fake news" and part of a wider hacking attack on its national news service.
These tensions are not new. Qatar's views on Iran and groups like Hamas and Hezbollah are not the result of a sudden conversion. To some extent, Qatar - which is home to some 10,000 American troops at the Al Udeid Air Base - took a lead from the Obama doctrine of engagement with Iran, which led to the nuclear deal concluded in 2015. This diplomatic alignment and the presence of the strategically important air base meant that Doha enjoyed a measure of American protection as it pursued its own regional agenda.
That has changed with the arrival of a new and very different administration in Washington. Since Trump has surrounded him with a coterie of advisers obsessed with the twin threats of Iranian influence and "radical Islamic terror," it makes sense that the Saudis decided this was the moment to act. Punishing Qatar and isolating Iran also fit with the Israeli government's assessment of its strategic interests, as it confronts Hezbollah forces to its north and Hamas in Gaza on its south-western border.
Caught out by the United States' new orientation, Doha is learning there is a price to pay for questioning the established orthodoxy.
Saudi Arabia and Iran are at odds over a number of regional issues, including Iran's nuclear program and what Saudis see as Tehran's growing influence in the kingdom's sphere of influence - especially in Syria, Lebanon and neighboring Yemen.
Comments about Iran attributed to the Emir of Qatar recently caused Saudi, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt to block Qatari media outlets.
"There are two competing theories."One is that Saudi Arabia felt emboldened after Donald Trump's visit, and Trump's administration has had a strong stance on Iran, which is backed by Qatar.
"Another theory is that this is a product of a month's tension, all brought to a breaking point after the Qatar news agency hacking story."
Trump recently visited the Saudi capital and addressed 55 Muslim leaders in a landmark speech urging them to increase efforts to combat terrorism.
Iran's state news agency, the Islamic Republic News Agency, or IRNA, blamed tensions on the US President's visit.
"The first impression of the US President Donald Trump's visit to the region is the recent tension in the countries' relations," said the chairman of the Iranian Parliament's Foreign Policy and National Security Commission, Alaeddin Boroujerdi.
"Neighbors are permanent; geography can't be changed," tweeted Iran Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. "Coercion is never the solution. Dialogue is imperative, especially during blessed Ramadan."
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan discussed over the phone the Qatar developments and called on all interested countries to engage in dialogue, the Kremlin. Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu expressed "sorrow" at the decision of countries to cut ties with Qatar and asked for a peaceful solution to the diplomatic rift, the country's state news agency Anadolu reported.
Cavusoglu said the nation is ready to help bring the disputes to a manageable level.
US President Donald Trump met with King Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud of Saudi Arabia and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi during his visit to Riyadh last month for his backing. But it is pertinent to note that the US' biggest concentration of military personnel in the Middle East are located at Qatar's Al Udeid Air Base. The sprawling base 20 miles southwest of Doha is home to some 11,000 US military personnel.
Qatar is due to host the 2022 FIFA World Cup, but FIFA declined requests for comment on whether the tournament will be affected.
Qatar said on 8th June that it will not "surrender" and rejected any interference in its foreign policy, defying its Gulf neighbors in an escalating dispute over its alleged support for extremists.
In an interview with AFP, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said calls for a change in Qatari policy from Saudi Arabia and its allies, which cut diplomatic ties with Doha this week, were unacceptable. "No one has the right to intervene in our foreign policy," Sheikh Mohammed said.
He also rejected "a military solution as an option" to resolving the crisis, and said Qatar could survive "forever" despite the measures taken against it.
"We are not ready to surrender, and will never be ready to surrender the independence of our foreign policy," he told reporters later, adding: "No one will break us."
The gas-rich emirate's satellite news giant Al-Jazeera has also emerged as a point of contention and the broadcaster says it was battling a major cyber attack.
The UAE and Saudi Arabia have banned Al-Jazeera from the airwaves and closed the channel's offices.
US President Donald Trump, who had initially backed the measures against Qatar in a tweet, called Sheik Tamim with an offer "to help the parties to resolve their differences".
Analysts say the current crisis is in part an extension of a 2014 dispute, when Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain temporarily recalled their ambassadors from Doha over Qatari support for Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.
For immediate implications 40% of food stuff comes from Saudi Arabia to Qatar that has been stopped. Qatar Airlines have been badly affected and it has to change or close its routes. Qatar is also part of gas reserves with Iran and still it has not discontinued gas supply to UAE neither it has asked thousands of Egyptian workers to leave the Qatar. President Trump has now contacted Qatar Emir with his offer for mediation. Kuwait is also trying for that. Russia is also in search of playing its role.
As one can see in the given table that Gulf countries are still better than other Muslim countries though their exports have decreased and imports have increased with significant increase in their external debt in the last three years. So if all this continues than the whole region would come under severe turmoil with each country of the Muslim world to side with either camp or that would be like Third World War for the Muslim World.
If this happens then USA, India and Israel would succeed in getting their plans fulfilled.
Chairman Centre of Advisory Services for Islamic Banking and Finance (CAIF), former Head of FSCD SBP, former Head of Research Arif Habib Investments and Member IFSB Task Force for development of Islamic Money Market, former Member of Access to Justice Fund Supreme Court of Pakistan.
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