Saudi Arabia is bothered by the fact that Qatar is offering citizenship and support to Saudi opposition figures working out of Qatar and financing those residing in Europe, supporting campaigns against Riyadh by international human rights organizations, urging (and funding) a Houthi takeover in Yemen, and trying to buy the loyalty of some Saudi tribal elders and members of the Saudi royal family. The UAE, for its part, has its own grievances against Qatar. Qatar gave a platform for Yusuf al-Qaradawi to launch a barrage of accusations against its neighbour UAE. An Emirati court also found Al-Jazeera complicit in anti-government media programming in the UAE. The GCC countries may have mistakenly believed that Qatar would change its foreign policy after of the accession Prince Tamim. But Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain have since reached the conclusion that Qataris do not want to end their support for extremist groups representing political Islam in the region. They believe that Qatar is arming those groups as well as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The changes within Arab countries, especially Egypt, Syria, Libya, and Yemen, have engendered a new regional political configuration. In the past few years, Qatar, assisted by its media arsenal, has managed to gain the trust of the Arab public and be a source on the Arab scene for many foreign news outlets. Qatar competed with Egypt competed for the post of Secretary General of the Arab League, and it has played a direct role in toppling Gaddafi and Mubarak, attempting to overthrow Assad, and engaging in various mediations in Sudan, Yemen, Somalia, Palestine, and Lebanon. With the support of Washington, Doha has benefited from the political vacuum left by Cairo, Riyadh, and Ankara. To Arabs Qatar is inherently associated with the political Islam which is now dominating the Arab scene and is synchronized with the U.S. administration’s policy towards Islamists. Qatar, through its media influence, is playing an outsized role in supporting polices divergent from those of the GCC. This falling out may lead to investment disruptions—especially in the trade and transportation sectors—capable of seriously impacting the relatively small Qatar. Moreover, it may impact the Dolphin Energy pipeline which carries about 2 billion ft3 of gas daily from Qatar to the UAE and Oman, a figure about 5% of Qatars total exports and about 30% of the UAEs gas needs. The ripples of dissension will probably extend beyond concerns about oil and gas to harm the Saudi Arabia-Qatar cooperation in support of the armed opposition in Syria. turkishweekly.net/news/164546/behind-qatar-s-crisis-with-the-gcc.html
Posted on: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 01:47:04 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015