Gulf states pull ambassadors from Qatar over foreign policy

[JustJohn or JJ]

Gulf states pull ambassadors from Qatar over foreign policy rift

March 5, 2014 8:35AM ET Updated 10:34AM ET

Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain say Qatar did not sign security pact, but regional disagreements loom large


_{Ministers with the Gulf Corporation Council meet in Riyadh in Sept. 2013.Fayez Nureldine/AFP/Getty Images}

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain withdrew their ambassadors from Qatar on Wednesday in a rare visible split between the Gulf Arab allies. The falling-out appears to be related to disagreements over Qatar’s stance on the political turmoil shaking much of the Middle East.

Qatar's cabinet voiced "regret and surprise" at the decision by Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) counterparts but said Doha would not pull out its own envoys in response and that it remained committed to "the security and stability" of the GCC.

According to a report published by Saudi state media on Wednesday, the decision to withdraw diplomatic envoys was made because Qatar did not implement a security pact about non-interference in the internal affairs of the other states that make up GCC.

The move escalated an internal power struggle over foreign policy in the GCC, which also includes Kuwait and Oman, and represents a significant challenge for Qatar's young ruler Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani less than a year after he took power.

A pro-Western alliance of absolute monarchies, the GCC was set up in the 1980s as a counterweight to Iranian influence in the Gulf, and includes several of the world's biggest oil and gas producers and exporters.

Saudi Arabia, the biggest GCC state by population, size and economy, has grown increasingly frustrated over recent years at the efforts of Qatar, a country of just 2 million, to leverage its large wealth from gas exports into regional clout.

The statement follows two years of efforts by Saudi Arabia to build a closer union between the GCC countries on foreign and security policy in an effort to cement a united front against what it sees as Iranian aggression.

However, Gulf analysts and diplomats say it is too early to cast doubts on the ability of the GCC to hold together, pointing towards previous disagreements between member states that were later settled. Many GCC members have decades-old border disputes with each other, but efforts to resolve them are normally pursued without any apparent acrimony.

Qatar has been out of step with other countries in the region, showing support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, a move viewed with suspicion or outright hostility by some fellow GCC members.

Al Thani, in his early 30s, said when he succeeded his father in June 2013 that Qatar would not "take direction" in foreign affairs, suggesting he would continue Doha's assertive, independent-minded foreign policy.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE are fuming especially over Qatar's support for the Muslim Brotherhood, a movement whose political ideology challenges the principle of dynastic rule, and by its playing host to its spiritual leader Yusuf Qaradawi.

Saudi and other Gulf Arab officials, as well as leaders of the military-backed government in Egypt, have voiced complaints about Qatari-owned Al Jazeera, which they see as being openly supportive of the Brotherhood and critical of their governments.

[JustJohn or JJ]

World

Sun Mar 09, 2014 12:11

PM: Saudi Arabia, Qatar Declare 'War on Iraq'




TEHRAN (FNA)- Saudi Arabia and Qatar are destabilizing Iraq by supporting militant groups and have effectively declared war on the country, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said in an interview.

"They are attacking Iraq, through Syria and in a direct way, and they announced war on Iraq," the premier said in an interview with France 24, AFP reported Saturday.

"These two countries are primarily responsible for the sectarian and terrorist and security crisis of Iraq. "

Maliki said accusations that he was marginalizing Iraq's Sunni minority, were being pushed by "sectarians with ties to foreign agendas with Saudi and Qatari incitement."

He said Riyadh and Doha were providing political, financial and media support to militant groups and accused them of "buying weapons for the benefit of these terrorist organizations".

[Jaga]

So, there is lots of sectarian violence there.

[JustJohn or JJ]

David Hearst    

Editor, Middle East Eye

Saudi Arabia Threatens to Lay Siege to Qatar: Cooperation or Confrontation?


Posted: 03/09/2014 12:57 pm EDT Updated: 03/09/2014 2:59 pm EDT

Saudi Arabia has threatened to blockade its neighbouring Gulf State Qatar by land and sea unless it cuts ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, closes Al Jazeera, and expels local branches of two prestigious U.S. think tanks, the Brookings Doha Center and the Rand Qatar Policy Institute.

The threats against the television station Al Jazeera, Brookings Institute and the Rand Corporation, were made by the Saudi Foreign Minister Saud bin Faisal in a foreign minister's meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council in Riyadh last week, according to a source who was present. Bin Faisal said only these acts would be sufficient if Qatar wanted to avoid "being punished."

News of the threats to shut down the Brookings and Rand Corporation think tanks in Doha will embarrass the U.S. president Barack Obama, who is due to visit Riyadh at the end of month. His Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker was in Abu Dhabi on Sunday, where she told AP that she will tell officials from the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar that closer economic cooperation with Washington is a bridge to building deeper security ties.

The Saudi royal family were enraged and threatened, in equal measure, by the role Al Jazeera played in the first years of the Arab Spring , which saw fellow potentates deposed in popular revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt . They are now equally upset at the sympathetic coverage the Doha-based television station gives to the opposition, secular and Islamist, in Egypt. Three journalists from Al Jazeera, its Egypt bureau chief Mohamed Fahmy the Australian correspondent Peter Greste and Egyptian producer Baher Mohamed appeared in court in Cairo last week accused of "joining a terrorist group, aiding a terrorist group, and endangering national security." A fourth journalist, from Al Jazeera Arabic, Abdullah al-Shami is being tried in a separate case.

The military backed government in Egypt accuse Al Jazeera of providing a platform for the supporters of the ousted president Mohamed Morsi, and the now outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. "Journalists are not terrorists," Fahmy shouted from the cage in the courtroom.

The threat to lay siege to Qatar was made in private before the Kingdom withdrew its ambassador to Doha and issued a decree on Friday declaring the Brotherhood a terrorist organization, alongside Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and the Nusra Front.

The threat of a sea blockade is not taken seriously in Qatar. But the state's only land border is with Saudi Arabia and is therefore easily closed. At present a substantial amount of the fresh food and goods the bustling city of Doha needs every day passes through this border. There are only 40 miles of sea and land borders between the two states, and clashes have taken place along them in the past. The border was disputed for 35 years. Qatar and Saudi Arabia skirmished in 1992, when Saudi troops occupied a border post. A final border agreement was only signed in 2001.

The increasingly McCarthyite tone adopted by the Saudi monarchy in its public pronouncements about the Brotherhood is thought to be a sign of desperation at the way events in Egypt are turning out. Supporting the military dictatorship in Cairo is costing the kingdom and its ally in the United Arab Emirates dear. Together they have spent $32 billion propping the coup up, with no end in sight to the chaos.

The Egyptian authorities are battling continuing protests by Morsi supporters and secular activists, a mass campaign of civil disobedience including attacks against policemen and police stations, strikes, an insurgency in the Sinai peninsula, as well as drive by shootings and bomb attacks mounted by Islamic militants.In hinting that he would run for the presidency, General Abdel Fatah al-Sisi said his country needed 3 trillion Egyptian Pounds, twice the current public debt to refill the nation's empty coffers.

The draconian decree issued on Friday will have a dramatic impact on free expression in Saudi Arabia itself. Cast in the most general terms, it targets not only supporters of named banned organizations, but anyone "preaching any atheistic thought." It bans all protest and anyone attending conferences or symposia, locally or internationally "that target the security or stability of the country and stir up sedition within society."

Article four of the decree outlaws: "whoever manifests affiliation to any of these [groups] or expresses sympathy with any of them or promotes any of them or convenes meetings under their umbrella whether inside or outside the Kingdom."

The articles continues: "This includes participating in all forms of media, whether audio or print or video, and in social media networks of all forms and types, audio, print and video, and in internet websites by reporting or re-transmitting any of their contents in whatever format, or the use of the slogans or emblems of these groups and currents or the use of any such symbols that may express support for them or sympathy with them."

This is aimed at the millions of twitter accounts in the Kingdom, which has become the only unfettered means of expressing opinion and dissent.

Analysts elsewhere in the Gulf expect the Saudi tactics to backfire. They have already paralyzed the Gulf Cooperation Council, with Oman refusing to expel Qatar and Kuwait deeply uneasy. It is also propelling the start of a significant regional realignment. Within hours of the Saudi decision to withdraw its ambassador to Doha, the Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called the emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad in support. Doha has also become closer to Iran as a result of its bust up with Riyadh.

The open diplomatic warfare between Riyadh and Doha pits two generations of Gulf ruler against each other -- the 89-year-old Abdullah bin Abdulaziz versus the 33-year-old Tamim bin Hamad. It will be interesting to see which generation prevails.


Just a note:

Is there something wrong with the water in Saudi Arabia that these sheiks are drinking

[JustJohn or JJ]

World News
03.10.14




Mideast Ally Blasts U.S. Over Accused Terrorist Story


In a rare rift between two close allies, the usually discreet United Arab Emirates has gone public over its exasperation with the State Department.

Since 9/11, one of America’s closest allies in the Middle East has been the federation of seven sheikdoms known as the United Arab Emirates. Wedged between Iran and Saudi Arabia this wealthy country does $27 billion a year in trade with the United States and has modernized its military with American arms.

This close alliance is now straining after a rare outburst from the UAE. The dispute centers on a single paragraph in the State Department’s annual human rights report about the failed efforts of Islamists to form a political party inside the emirates. The UAE issued a public response Monday asking why the report never acknowledged evidence that the leader of this party was now running a jihadist training camp in Syria.

The UAE almost always conducts its diplomacy behind the scenes and rarely issues any public criticism of the United States. But in recent years the UAE’s rulers have quietly seethed at how President Obama has managed affairs in the Middle East and particularly his support for the toppling of America’s former client in Egypt, Hosni Mubarak.

For the emirates, a small country that quietly funded a mission to train a counter-piracy force in Somalia and has waged a political war against Islamist extremists in the Middle East, a few lines in a voluminous government report was an insult.

The UAE is angry that the report makes it appear that the founder of the Ummah Party, Hassan al-Diqqi, is just a regular democratic organizer.

“Emirati diplomacy, like that of other conservative Arab Gulf states, is usually done discreetly,” said Simon Henderson, an expert on the Gulf region at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “To issue a news release is extraordinary and suggests a diplomatic rift with Washington which the Obama administration should quickly deal with.”

The last time any Emirati official went on the record with a bad word for the United States was in 2010 after the State Department spokesman compared the UAE to China and Iran for threatening to cut off Blackberry service if the provider did not share the call data of its users with the government.

In a statement, the UAE’s ambassador responded in 2010 that his government was only asking Blackberry to hand over the same kind of information that Blackberry already gives willingly to the United States (this was before the Guardian and Washington Post published NSA documents to prove it).

This time around the UAE is angry that the State Department's human rights report makes it appear that the founder of the Ummah Party, Hassan al-Diqqi, is just a regular democratic organizer. (The report calls him Ahmed al-Dakki, but the Daily Beast was able to confirm with the State Department that he is al-Diqqi)

Al-Diqqi attempted to form the Ummah party in 2012 following the arrests of several prominent Islamists. At the time the UAE denounced al-Diqqi for his ties to jihadist organizations and prohibited the formation of the party.

“There is a section of each human rights report that highlights the elections and political process of a country including the status of political parties,” said Carole Jackson, a State Department press officer. “The point was that citizens do not have the right to form political parties in the United Arab Emirates.”

The Washington Post reported last year that al-Diqqi had appeared in a YouTube video as the leader of a jihadist militia in Syria appealing for donations. More recently, another senior member of the UAE’s Ummah Party, Abdul Rahman Omeir al-Naimi was designated by the Treasury Department as a financier of al Qaeda.

But none of those updates made it into the latest State Department Human Rights report. A section on al-Diqqi says, “In 2012 several citizens led by (al-Diqqi) announced the formation of the country’s first political party, called ‘Al Umma.’ There were no updates on (al-Diqqi) or the ‘Al Umma’ organization at the end of the year.”

What some at the State Department might regard as an oversight was interpreted as a major slight by the UAE. “The Ummah oversight would seem to suggest that a recalibration of the report’s findings is necessary and that it therefore provides an unbalanced picture of the human rights situation in the UAE,” the UAE’s ministry of foreign affairs said in a statement Monday.

Jackson said, “Al-Diqqi was highlighted in last year’s report because he announced the formation of a political party. We did not have any 2013 update on the formation of political parties, including those referenced in the previous year’s report.”

On a side note Al-Naimi’s human rights organization, Al-Karama Foundation, is a source for one claim in the Human Rights report’s section on Algeria. In that case Jackson acknowledged an error. “Those references to al-Karama should have been edited out and it was an editing error that left them in,” she said.

To be sure, the UAE is not a western democracy. In 2009 a video tape was first aired by ABC News that showed Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al Nahyan, the brother of the UAE’s crown prince, savagely beating and torturing a man with the assistance of men in UAE police uniforms. In December of 2009, an Emirati court found al-Nahyan not guilty.

At the same time, the UAE has not had the wide-scale uprisings that have led to massive human rights abuses from other states in the region such as Bahrain and Syria.

One UAE official who is close to the issue told the Daily Beast, “The critical mischaracterization contained in the report would appear to point to the State Department’s inability to understand the dynamics of the UAE.”

It is by no means the only irritant in the relationship. In Obama’s first year in office, the emirates signed a nuclear deal with the United States whereby Abu Dhabi forswore any rights to build up its capability to enrich nuclear fuel. This year the Obama administration has quietly signaled that it would be willing to accept such an enrichment capacity with the UAE’s chief adversary, Iran.